


Grayson's Run

by AconitumNapellus



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 06:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 30,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3371822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spock, amnesiac and lost in time, wakes in post-WWI England with only the clothes he wears and a strange black object that he believes is important. He is being hunted, but he doesn't know how or why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

All in all, he was a man. That much he could tell straight off. The dark hair that spidered across his flat chest, seen through the rips in his tattered shirt. The stubble on his jawline that rasped on the soft skin of his palms. Yes, he was a man, standing in a dark place in dry air that felt curiously refreshing to his lungs. Whatever he was beyond that, he didn’t know. Didn’t remember. Couldn’t pull into the active areas of his memory. It frustrated him like the feeling of an insect bite that he couldn’t quite locate and scratch. It was a hot, insistent feeling.

The most obvious thing to grope for was his name, but it seemed that had been taken too. His name, his origins. Every label, every definition – all was fleeting, hanging on the outside of his consciousness, just out of reach. His mind felt as dark as the night around him.

That was something to grab onto. There was dark night and the quivering light of a lamp somewhere, close enough to light up his body in discreet shades, far enough away not to dazzle his eyes. He had a headache, he realised. There was a kind of band that was tight about his forehead and temples and the low back of his skull. It ached and pulsed. There was pain in other places too. His forearm stung, and touching it he found his sleeve was wet and dark with blood. His ribs felt bruised. A large portion of his body felt bruised.

He was holding something in his hands. Something dense and irregular that he couldn’t make out properly in this light. Something black with coloured protrusions on it. It was important. He didn’t know why or how, but it was important.

He thought back to what he remembered. His life seemed very short, it seemed. Lying sprawled on dusty ground with a scent of plants and dirt in his nostrils. Taking in the wide dark of the sky above, points of light that showed stars burning unsettlingly far away, a crescent moon hanging as a dazzlingly bright sliver in the dark around. Feeling the dry earth under his fingertips, and then pushing himself up on bruised knees, and finally getting to his feet like a new-born creature, clutching this dense black object that he still held now.

He looked around, trying to take better stock of where he was. There was no before-time, it seemed. There was only now. There was that light burning, the light harsh and quivering, atop a wrought iron pole. Beyond it there were more. There were the outlines of roofs and chimneys. Smoke rising. Somewhere an animal barking and a shout cutting the quiet, and then everything dying away again into silence.

Instinctively he turned away from the light. Beneath his black-booted feet was a road or some kind of track, lightly rutted and dusty. He walked along it, finding that his left leg was painful to walk on, but that with a kind of intense concentration he could push the pain away and walk almost normally. He felt an urgency to get away from that place with houses and people, but he didn’t know why. He felt hunted. He felt vulnerable. He couldn’t remember why.

After some time his ears caught the soft sounds of water to his right. The road he was on was bounded by stone walls. He’d passed a gateway some way back, but unless he intended to double back the most logical option was to climb the wall. He managed it with more difficulty than he was comfortable with, his arms and ribs aching with pain as he did so. He landed on the other side on thin, soft grass, and his ankles protested at the impact, his left one in particular.

In the almost-dark he had to rely more on his ears than his eyes to find the source of the water he had heard, but eventually he found it, limping across a pocked field until the ground rucked and sloped downwards to a stream that was running low in its bed. There he sat on damp gravel and carefully put the black thing down beside him, then drank, and swept up water to wash blood from his wounds and dirt from his hands and face.

After that, he felt rather more normal, whatever normal was. He had to admit that really there was no _normal_ _._ He didn’t know where he was or even _who_ he was, and that was far from normal. Surely it was not ordinary for a person to have no idea of their name or their origins? He sat on the edge of the stream looking into the dark, wondering, and trying to remember.

It was no use. There was something fleeting at the edges of his thoughts but he couldn’t bring it any closer. He was tired. He realised that now. There was an aching tiredness rimming his eyes and making his limbs heavy and dulling his mind. Perhaps with sleep he would remember something. Perhaps things would become clearer.

He moved a little further from the stream to a place where the thin grass was soft and dry, and lay down. With his hand pillowing his head and that dark object held against his chest, he closed his eyes and let himself slip into sleep, and dreams.

His dreams were dark and tangled. _His arms flung up over his head. Trying to hide. Pain, and trying to push it away. Men or creatures or armoured things, running at him. Something flying at his head and striking him to the ground, perhaps. Lights and colour and sounds that screamed in his ears, and running, running, trying to get to the gate..._

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

‘Oi!’

The shout rang through the air. Startled, he opened his eyes, blinking at the bright light from a rising sun that was reflecting from the running stream and the parched grass. The world seemed to have turned golden and the sun was warm, but all of his bones and joints ached and his head throbbed. He moved his hand up to a place behind his ear and felt what he hadn’t the night before – blood caked and dried in his hair and the tenderness of a spreading bruise. He closed his eyes and opened them again, and heard the shout again.

‘Oi! You! Yer trespassing you are!’

He sat up very slowly, feeling the aches and pain running through his limbs as he moved. He clutched that black object he had been carrying against him like a precious stone. There was a man not far away over the field dressed in dull clothes and pointing at him with an outstretched arm. There was an instinctive need to run, but he didn’t run. He knew he didn’t have the necessary speed.

He stood with difficulty, spread one arm wide in a gesture of surrender and said, ‘I am sorry. I was lost. I did not know where – ’

His voice sounded hoarse, but he didn’t know why. The man came closer, looking curious now. He stopped within a few yards and stared, then said, ‘Blimey, what happened to you? You get beaten up or something?’

He shook his head, touching a hand to the blood-caked patch on his hair again.

‘I do not remember,’ he said, looking down at the bright blue of his torn top that looked suddenly strange next to this man’s dull greens and browns.

The man took a step closer, and then said again, ‘Blimey.’ This time his voice was different, though. Thin and shaking. ‘Blimey, what’s that all over you?’

He looked down at himself, at his arm that was slashed and his sleeve covered in blood, and there came the realisation that there was something different about him. He was different to this very pink-skinned man that he faced. That skin-tone reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what.

‘It is blood,’ he said innocently.

‘What in the Lord’s name...’

The man took a step back, and he stepped forward, reaching out a hand, wondering. He needed help. He knew that. This man was a stranger, and was scared, but he needed his help.

‘Please,’ he said.

‘Blimey, what are you?’ the man asked, his mouth half-hanging open.

‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘I don’t remember.’

The man stood very still, staring. He stared back, waiting for something to happen. The man staggered backwards and he tried to step closer again, dragging a leg that had become stiff and immensely painful with sleep. The man’s mouth opened again, and then he turned and fled.

He stood and watched as the man’s feet pounded across the dry field. Animals that he hadn’t noticed during the night scattered and ran – sheep, he knew somehow. Sheep that had been shorn of their fleeces and were thin and ragged looking. Why did he know the name for sheep when he did not know his own name?

He walked forward slowly. It would be impossible to chase the stranger. He was running too fast. Anyway, what would catching him achieve? There was evidently something terrifying about his person. Instead, he walked slowly into the field, looking about himself and trying to gauge his whereabouts. The field was gently sloping and undulating and bounded by stone walls. There were other fields surrounding it, and the road he had walked up ran past to the left. He was in a region of hills and he seemed to be part way up one of them. There were woods nearby, and further down the hill he could see smoke rising from those chimneys he had seen last night. He could understand the language that the man spoke to him, but that didn’t tell him much about where he was. Knowing he could understand a person didn’t mean he remembered all he had learnt about geography and language in his obscured past.

He walked on up the field to where he could see a small shack of some kind built against the stone wall. It was a roughly built thing made of wooden planks and a rippled metal roof. The door seemed to be tied on with string where one of the hinges was broken. But it offered a dark and secluded place to retreat to – the kind of place a dog might go to lick its wounds. He opened it cautiously and found more than he had expected. Rather than just an abandoned shed littered with rubbish it seemed to be fitted out to sleep in, with a very rough sack bed at one wall and an old kettle and enamel mug on a low shelf attached to the wall. There was another shelf higher up that held a curious curved wooden item with a bowl at one end and a tattered book beside it.

It was the bed that took his attention most firmly, though. He shut the door with great care behind him and sank down on the sacking, which seemed very soft after the earth he had slept on last night. He was no longer in need of sleep, but he was desperately in need of rest. He felt as if he could barely see due to the throbbing in his head. He curled around the object he was carrying and closed his eyes against the pain.

Somehow he did sleep again. He wasn’t aware of falling asleep, but he was aware of the dreams again, teasing at the edges of his mind. And then a voice saying, ‘I was right. He’s in here. Look. Be careful though...’

His eyes snapped open. There was light shining in around the edges of the door and the inside of the little hut was hot enough to ease some of the pain out of his limbs. There was a face there, and he recognised the man he had seen before. Just below that head, trying to see, the face of a woman.

He lay still, uncertain as the door opened wider. Then the man said, ‘I were right shook up before – that’s why I legged it. I never seen anything – well – ’

‘Come on, Jim, there’s always a reason for everything,’ the woman said in a soft voice.

 _Jim_. He blinked at that word. He recognised it somehow.

‘Jim?’ he repeated.

‘That’s my name,’ the man nodded. ‘So what’s yours then?’

He shook his head, confused. ‘I do not remember.’

‘You’ve had a bang on the head, ain’t you?’ Jim asked. ‘Look, this here is Elsie. She’s a nurse. Well, nurse in training, anyhow. Started up training hoping to help out in the war, but then that got finished – ’

‘Like that’s a bad thing, Jim?’ the woman said with a slight smile, pushing past him.

She stopped as soon as she saw the dishevelled, injured man on the bed more clearly, her eyes widening.

‘Told yer I’d got something rum up here, didn’t I?’ Jim asked her slyly.

He sat up, looking between the two strangers, trying to understand. He was a man with no name. A man with no place, no past, no memories. He was lost, utterly lost.

‘I mean no harm,’ he said in a faltering voice.

The two strangers exchanged glances.

‘Think we can get him back to the house, Elsie?’ Jim asked.

******

It was a low, dark place with beamed ceilings and a stone floor. He looked around it in wonder as they helped him up the stairs, feeling sure that he had never seen a place like this before. Everything here seemed elemental, attached to the ground on which it was made. The road he had walked up in the light this time was barely metalled, and ridged with ruts from narrow wheels. The mud on it had been turned to cracked cakes that were powering into dust. He looked at lot at the ground as he walked, needing to see to keep himself steady.

‘Worst summer we’ve had for a long time,’ Jim had said as he stared at that desiccated ground. ‘We’re in need of rain badly.’

The heat was so pleasant on his aching back that the thought of rain was anathema. The cool and dark inside this low-ceilinged house sent chills through him. But the room they took him to upstairs was lighter and warmer, the sun pushing directly through the sloping ceiling and shining through a window let into the roof. He sank down onto the bed they took him to and let that sun ease out the pain again.

‘What’s that you’ve been carrying like your first-born all this time?’ Jim asked as he tried to slip the dense object he carried into the folds of the sheet beside him.

‘Let him alone, Jim,’ Elsie said in a low voice. ‘There’s time for questions like that later.’

He looked down at the object, looking at it properly now for the first time. Still the outward form meant nothing to him. It was important. He knew it was very important. But he didn’t know what it was or where it came from.

‘You need a name,’ Jim said. ‘What are we going to call you?’

He stared up at the two of them, empty of answers. Then something moved into his mind.

‘Grayson,’ he said slowly. He didn’t know where it came from, but it felt like it belonged.

‘Grayson?’ Jim repeated. ‘That it? No Christian name?’

He shook his head. ‘I do not know.’

‘Jim, that’s enough,’ Elsie protested again, pushing past him to kneel by the bed.

She looked closely at him – Grayson as he now was – and the same kind of flinching look passed over her face that had come over Jim’s when he had first seen him.

‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ she said briskly, giving no voice to whatever thoughts had passed. ‘Jim, come with me, will you? Help me get the water boiling and find the carbolic.’

Grayson lay on the bed and watched as they left the room. They spoke in low tones on the stairs, but he could still hear them quite clearly. His hearing was evidently sharper than they expected.

‘...but what is he, Else? I mean – ’

‘I don’t know, but he’s hurt,’ came her low, resolute reply.

‘Those ears. You ever seen ears like that except in a book of fairies? Eyebrows to match. And that green... You think he’s some kind of – some kind of science experiment or summat?’

‘Let’s get him clean, Jim, then ask questions,’ Elsie insisted, and Grayson felt a surge of gratitude towards her. He had no answers. Questions only made the chaos in his mind more real.

He pulled out that black object from beside him on the bed and looked at it properly for the first time. He had no idea what it was. It looked as if it had been ripped from something. There were raw connections at one end. It was asymmetrical and shiny, and every protrusion had a different colour to it. He lifted it closer to his eyes, turning it in his hands, discerning that those colours were perhaps lights beneath a clear covering. He wondered why the object was so heavy. He wondered why it was so important. It was the one material thing that seemed to connect him to the time _before_ , though. The one thing he carried. His pockets were empty. His clothes were beyond saving. Even his boots were ragged with wear.

He sighed, resting his aching head back on the pillow, feeling the sun pushing into his bones and the stinging cuts and grazes. That black thing should be put somewhere safe, but he was too tired to think of somewhere right now. The room he was in was not replete with hiding places. Besides the bed there was a low chest of drawers with a mirror propped on top of it, and a chair near the window. The floor was bare board covered with a threadbare rug. For now he would just have to keep that black thing within his sight.

He heard footsteps coming back up the stairs, and then the door opened to admit Elsie and Jim again. _Jim..._ Why did that name resonate in his mind? The appearance of the man – dark-haired, ruddy-cheeked, in those rough clothes – meant nothing to him. But the name...

‘Are there other people called Jim?’ he asked, startling the two as they entered the room with water and towels.

Jim grinned, shooting Elsie a glance. ‘Thousands, I reckon,’ he said with good-humour. ‘James’s my given name. Jim’s a short. I know a good five other Jims round here alone, counting Ayckthorne and Wetherby village, too.’

Grayson blinked at that. None of those names meant a thing to him.

‘It seems that I was born on the hill last night,’ he said, inwardly chastening himself for the leaning towards romanticism, but feeling the truth of the statement all the same.

‘Well, maybe you were,’ Elsie said pragmatically. ‘Jim, shove that chair over by the bed, will you?’

As Jim moved the chair she hefted a large bowl of hot water across the room and set it down on the seat. She unscrewed the lid from a small jar of dark ointment, and smiled.

‘This may hurt a bit,’ she warned him, ‘but I need to get those wounds clean and dressed. I don’t have much but I can be sure you’re clean. I need you to get your clothes off. No need to be bashful. I’m a nurse – or close-as.’

He regarded her for a moment, then surrendered to the logic of the situation. It was painful removing his clothes. In places the fabric was stuck and dried into his wounds. But soon the ragged clothes he wore were in a pile on the floor and Elsie had spread a towel down on the bed for him to lie on, and was carefully easing crusted blood and dirt from his skin.

As she worked she became more silent, and Grayson watched her intently, seeing her facial expression change. Jim stood behind her, watching, but he sensed a kind of coiled readiness in the man.

‘I am different, am I not?’ Grayson asked.

‘You could say that,’ Elsie said through thin lips. Her face was pale. ‘This _is_ blood, isn’t it?’

He looked down at his arm, at the swollen gash there that had started to ooze again now that she was cleaning the dried blood away.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘I – am different. Am I right?’

‘Jim and me – and just about any folk I’ve ever come across – our blood is red,’ Elsie told him.

Grayson’s eyes flicked to Jim. His hands were pressed over his mouth and he looked the same colour as the wall behind him. Abruptly he left the room and pounded down the stairs, and the sound of retching could be heard.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Elsie said, intent on the wound on his arm. ‘He’s always been a lightweight.’

‘Where do I come from?’ Grayson asked blankly.

She looked up and smiled. ‘If you don’t know, I don’t know,’ she told him gently. ‘But we’ll find out. Maybe someone – ’

‘Tell no one,’ he said quickly, instinctively. ‘Please.’

‘You’re on the run from somewhere?’ she asked him, her eyes fixed on his wounds again. She finished cleaning his arm, smeared some of the dark, greasy ointment on the cut, and started to wind a tight, clean bandage about it.

‘I don’t know,’ he faltered. ‘But – ’

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ she promised him. ‘You’re not the first to have a secret. Why, Jim and me – we were married a whole year before anyone even had an inkling.’

He looked into her eyes. They were greyish blue, honest and kind. She pushed a loose strand of her light brown hair away from her face, and smiled.

‘When Jim was in the army and I was training for a nurse, and the war was still on, it didn’t seem right,’ she confessed. ‘But we got married anyway. My mam never would have stood for it, me marrying a farmer. But here we are, married, and it’s too late now.’

He nodded, wondering what had prompted that confession. Perhaps it was because he had no secrets to confess himself.

‘Will your husband be all right?’ he asked.

She laughed. ‘You think you could come out of the trenches without fainting at the sight of blood, but – ’

‘ _My_ blood is different,’ he said, looking down at his pale skin and the numerous crusted, green-tinged cuts. There was nothing odd about his own body. He wondered if he would suffer a similar reaction to Jim’s if he saw their blood. Somehow he didn’t imagine that he would.

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

He had been in this little room under the roof for some hours. He felt like a hunted animal that had gained temporary respite. A hunted animal that didn’t know who was hunting it, or why. Jim had not come back upstairs. He had heard plenty of conversation downstairs between Jim and Elsie, but it was just a little too quiet through the thick floorboards for him to catch the words.

He picked up that black object again and looked at it. He closed his hands around it as if hoping that he would get some kind of supernatural emanation from it. It felt familiar in his hands, but he still couldn’t work out what it might be. It wasn’t _his_ _._ He was almost certain of that. He had taken it from somewhere. Perhaps he was a thief. Perhaps he wasn’t deserving of help at all.

He stood up awkwardly, resting a hand on the wall to steady himself. His ankle was sprained, apparently. His slashed arm and injured ankle were both tightly wrapped in clean bandages, as was the stinging injury to his head. He touched his fingers lightly to the bandages there, sweeping his damp hair away and trying to feel, if such a thing were possible, how bad the damage was. Elsie had said she couldn’t tell if there were a fracture without an x-ray, ‘And somehow I don’t think you want to be x-rayed,’ she told him, ‘even if we did have the money to pay.’

He couldn’t help but agree. There was something instinctive, something far away in his mind, that told him to stay away from doctors and hospitals. He was wearing borrowed clothes now, things far less strange in this place that that torn blue top and tight black trousers, but still he felt his difference from everything that was around him.

He caught a glimpse of movement in the mirror that was propped on the chest of drawers. It was his own reflection – a tall, lanky, angular figure in clothes that didn’t quite fit. He turned to look at himself properly. The silvering was damaged and blotched in places, but the mirror still gave a good reflection. He leant a hand on the drawers and bent closer. There were the ears that Jim and Elsie had mentioned more than once, tapering into points at the top. The eyebrows that slanted up into his hair. His hair was far darker than their hair, his eyes darker, his skin more olive, his lips less red. There was nothing unfamiliar about his face. But there was nothing particularly unfamiliar about the faces of the people who had taken him in, either. He could make out nothing from his reflection apart from the reassurance that he was _himself_. There were no surprises in the glass.

He walked unsteadily to the small-paned window that was built out as a gable from the sloping roof, and tried to open it. The catch was stiff, but after a moment of effort he undid it and pushed the window open. Hot air flooded in, pushing in from outside and rising from the slates that tiled the roof around. He had a sense that he would be comfortable with something far hotter, but he had been used to something cold and wet. A flash of something came across his mind. That running, again. Cold. Rain falling down through his hair and soaking his clothes. He did not like cold.

Outside it looked as if it had not been cold for a while. The fields that spread around this run-down farm were yellowed and dry. Sheep bleated mournfully in the distance. From this window he could make out no other dwellings, but with the way the land rose and fell it was possible that there were houses or farms hidden in the dells. He looked for smoke rising, and caught a wisp far away, but no more. On this side this place appeared to be isolated.

Someone was coming upstairs again. He turned as Elsie came into the room carrying a tray of food. She was wearing an apron now over her shirt and skirt, and her hair had been neatened up.

‘You should be in bed,’ she said succinctly.

‘You sound like – ’ he began, but he could not remember who she sounded like.

‘I brought you a little food,’ she said. ‘I thought you might be hungry.’

He sat down on the bed as a compromise, stretching out his injured leg in an attempt to ease the strain on the joint. She put the tray down on the chair and he looked at it. There was a steaming mug of something and a pile of what he knew to be sandwiches. He picked one up and bit into it – and then stopped, confused. There was something repulsive about it. He didn’t know what to do. It would be unthinkable to spit it out.

He steeled himself, and swallowed.

‘You don’t like potted meat, eh?’ Elsie asked, looking amused at his predicament.

‘Meat?’ he asked, his eyebrow rising as much as the gorge was rising in his throat. ‘I – don’t eat animal products,’ he said instinctively, although he could not recall exactly why. ‘It is – unconscionable.’

‘Oh,’ she said, looking rather lost. ‘Well, those butties have all got potted meat in them. And butter. And the tea’s got milk...’

‘I am sorry,’ he said sincerely. She had worked hard to serve him, but he felt nauseous from that one bite of the sandwiches.

She sighed. ‘Jim’ll eat them. He’ll be hungry when he’s in from seeing to the sheep. But what can I make for you?’

He regarded her, apologetic, but uncertain as to what to suggest. He was hungry. He didn’t know how long it was since he had eaten, but it felt like a long time.

‘Do you have coffee?’ he asked, remembering sitting – somewhere – drinking dark, hot cups of coffee with – No. He couldn’t remember.

‘You’re a foreigner like Jim said, aren’t you?’ she said with an intrigued smile. ‘Are you American?’

‘I do not believe so,’ he said honestly.

‘I don’t have any coffee,’ she said. ‘Maybe I can get some next time I’m in town.’

‘I can drink milkless tea,’ he said, anxious not to cause more trouble than he needed to.

Her face wrinkled up in disgust. ‘You really are a foreigner, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

He watched her as she left, wondering if he should follow. Did he really need to be confined to bed? He still felt a certain amount of unsteadiness from the head wound, but he was capable of moving around. But perhaps it would be impolite to disobey his hosts. Elsie wanted him to stay in this room for now, so he sat still on the bed until she returned with a mug of clear brown tea and a new batch of sandwiches.

‘Cucumber sandwiches with cucumbers fresh out of the frame,’ she said with some pride. ‘I couldn’t think what to put in them until I looked out the window, and I wanted to give you something more solid than jam. You’re eating like the King, now, you are. I wouldn’t recommend that tea to anyone, though,’ she said as he picked up the mug. ‘I made it weak, but it’s as bitter as anything. Hot, too.’

He took a sip, and the taste was refreshingly familiar.

‘It is not too hot,’ he said. ‘Nor too bitter. It is fine, thank you.’

She sat watching him as he ate and drank. He looked up at her and said, ‘Your curiosity is very evident.’

She laughed. ‘Well, we don’t see many people like you around here,’ she said.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But – where is here? I do not know where I am.’

‘ _Here_ ,’ she told him, ‘is Top Farm. Ingersdale, Yorkshire. That’s in England, if you’re still not sure.’

He blinked, looking over toward the window again. ‘I do not understand,’ he said slowly.

She stared at him, puzzled. ‘You know where England is, I suppose? A rainy little island out on the edge of the world, under the reign of George the Fifth. Yes?’

‘George the Fifth...’ he echoed.

In his mind maps and statistics were flashing past. All those things were familiar to him. George V – that put him somewhere in the time period of 1910 to 1936. It put him, all things considered, a very, very long way away from home – especially as he could not remember where home was. How was it that he could see detailed maps of Earth in his mind, but he could not see which part was home?

Where had he been? None of those names she had said fitted. This heat and sunshine didn’t fit. The bright yellow sun in the sky didn’t fit. He remembered a sky so dark it was almost indigo, ragged clouds moving and slipping to reveal glittering bands of something rising up across the arc of the heavens from one side to the other. Planetary rings. That’s what they were. A jumble of stone and ice reflecting the light from a distant sun. He remembered cold and falling rain and running. Running, clutching that black thing to his chest, being chased, people shouting... Trying to get to the gate...

‘I am not from here at all,’ he said, pulling himself back from those fragmented memories.

‘I think we’ve established that,’ she told him, leaning forward to regard him earnestly. ‘But where _are_ you from?’

He looked at her, lost. ‘Elsewhere,’ he said.

He picked up another sandwich and ate it, intrigued by the soft bread and the crisp, wet taste of the cucumber as his teeth cut through it. This wasn’t something he was used to eating, he was sure.

‘Do you think I will remember?’ he asked once he had finished the last sandwich. He felt somewhat more normal now he had eaten, apart from the pain in his body and that great vacant space that made itself felt every time he tried to think of who he was or where he came from.

Elsie touched light fingers to the bandage around his head, peeling it back a little to look at the wound underneath. He forced himself to stay still as she checked rather than wincing away at her touch. The bruising spread over the whole side of his head.

‘I think so,’ she said in a bright tone. Her smile seemed a little too certain. ‘Well, it’s stopped bleeding, I think. That’s a bonus. But – ’

She hesitated, wiping a small amount of his dried blood from her fingers and looking at it with fascination.

‘You know, people aren’t just born with green blood,’ she said quietly. ‘I mean, sometimes you get someone born with six fingers on each hand, or a hare lip or club foot. But people aren’t born with green blood and with ears like you have. People might say you were a fairy or an elf, but they don’t believe in things like that, and I don’t either. Where are you from?’

‘I do not know,’ he said, turning himself so that he could lie down on the bed. He felt suddenly tired again.

‘You’re not the same as me and Jim,’ she said. ‘You’re not the same as anyone I’ve ever seen. The only explanations I can think of don’t bear thinking of. Experiments, accidents, men from outer space...’

His head jerked up at that. He thought about the sky last night, wide and dark and full of stars that seemed far too far away for comfort. He felt bound by gravity, as if the darkness up there outside the atmosphere was impossibly far away. He thought of that shard of memory – the dark sky with the rings reaching across it and the cold and rain around him.

‘Men from outer space,’ he echoed.

‘I don’t believe in things like that, either,’ Elsie said decisively. ‘Men from Mars. What rot. What would God be doing putting people on other planets when Paradise is here on ours?’

He regarded her. This talk of God and Paradise seemed unutterably alien, more alien than the idea of men from Mars or a difference in blood.

‘Men from outer space,’ he said again. He picked up that odd black object and tucked it at his side to be sure it was safe, then rested his head back on his pillow. ‘Would you allow me to sleep, Elsie?’ he asked. ‘The food was greatly appreciated, but I am tired. I think sleep will help me heal.’


	4. Chapter 4

Elsie carried the tray back down to the kitchen with her lips pressed together and too many thoughts running through her mind. She’d marked that room – the guest room, as such – for the baby when it came. If a baby ever came. That was seeming less likely day by day, no matter how much she wheedled to Jim that the house had been empty long enough. She’d never imagined having a guest like this in it, though. She couldn’t work him out – who he was, what he was. She’d seen a lot of things when she’d been training for a nurse. Men half out of their minds with shell-shock, men with arms and legs blown off, eyes blinded or chests torn open. But she’d never seen anything like that. There was something odd about him, besides the blood. Something unearthly...

She looked up to see Jim stamping in over the sill, knocking dust off the sides of his boots before unlacing them and throwing them into a corner.

‘There’s a tray for you there,’ she said, nodding towards the uneaten potted meat sandwiches, which she had covered with a cloth. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’

‘He’s still up there, then?’ Jim asked, lifting the cloth on the tray and picking up one of the sandwiches. ‘Thanks, love. Tea’ll do nicely.’

‘Yes, he’s still up there,’ she nodded, coming over to touch his arm. ‘He will be for a while, I think. That head injury’s going to keep him flat out for some time. You’re going to have to get over the sight of that blood.’

‘Well, it weren’t that exactly,’ he said, suddenly awkward. ‘It’s just – it’s not right, Else. You know that as well as I do. There’s something not right about him.’

‘We both know that,’ she nodded. ‘But it’s our duty to play the good Samaritan, isn’t it, Jim? To help the traveller that no one else would? Who else does he have?’

Jim glanced up at the ceiling. The room above was quiet, and Elsie hoped that the man up there was asleep. She blew more life into the fire and put the kettle on to heat, and Jim came close to her as she clattered the metal on the stove.

‘Else, what if he’s a spy or summat?’ he asked in a low tone.

Elsie laughed at that. ‘That war’s been over long enough now – and why do you think they’d send spies so obviously different as that? He’s not a spy. He’s a stranger, true. He’s strange enough – but he’s a good man – I can see that much.’

Jim smiled. ‘You were always a good judge of character,’ he said. ‘Well, mebbe not such a good judge, seeing as you took me on, but with other folk, like.’

‘You were the one who came back to help him,’ she reminded him. ‘The one who brought me up to the shepherd’s hut to take care of him. You said we couldn’t leave him.’

‘No more we can,’ Jim said stolidly, ‘but I’d like to know what it is we’ve got up there. Wouldn’t you?’

‘That makes three of us,’ Elsie reminded him. ‘As soon as _he_ _k_ nows, he’ll tell us, I’m sure. And the best way to do that is to nurse him back to health. To treat him kindly and look after him. And speaking of that, I need to think what to cook him for dinner. He doesn’t eat meat – did you know that? Not milk or eggs, either. I wonder if I could persuade him to an egg or two, though? He needs something nourishing. Something more than bread and cucumbers.’

‘He doesn’t eat meat?’ Jim echoed in astonishment, and she laughed.

‘Just because you can eat half a cow of an evening doesn’t mean all folks are like that. There’s lots of benefits been shown of not eating meat. It’s supposed to be very healthy.’

‘Else, I’ve been wondering if he’s – well – ’ Jim looked up at the ceiling again. ‘If he’s from – somewhere else. I mean – not of this earth.’

Elsie laughed at him again. ‘You’re a caution, Jim. You’ve been reading a sight too much H. G. Wells. Those things aren’t real, you know. Just an author’s mind working too hard. That’s all.’

‘Well,’ Jim said. He picked up another couple of sandwiches from the tray and went to sit down in the wing-backed armchair furthest from the stove. It was hot in the room. ‘Well, it’s a thought,’ he said, slightly defensively. ‘Unless you can think of another way to explain blood that colour and a face like he’s got.’

Elsie turned back to the kettle, jiggling it a little impatiently on the stove top, willing it to boil. She’d take another cup of tea up to their guest, quietly, just in case he was asleep. She could take a look at his injuries if he’d let her. Or perhaps, if he were asleep, she could just stand and take a look at him, and try to work out where he might have sprung from.

‘I don’t know how to explain that,’ she said. ‘But who knows what diabolical things they got up to in that last war. I mean, tanks and mustard gas and all that. Maybe there’s something can change the colour of blood.’

‘And the look of ears and eyebrows?’ Jim asked pointedly.

Elsie shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. She never had believed in fairies – especially not real, six foot fairies who were solid and dense as any human being – but those she had seen in books always had ears like that. But then, they didn’t have strange black objects that looked like that. Diadems and jewelled swords, maybe. Not odd black things like that.

She went to look at the pile of clothes she had taken from the man with the intention of washing them and mending them where she could. The boots perhaps could be mended by the cobbler in town, and the rips in the trousers might not be beyond her skill. But the fabric was strange. It didn’t feel like cotton or linen or wool. It was smoother than that, almost slippery. There was that badge on his chest, some kind of symbol, like an arrow pointing to heaven with two loops entwined. That was fairy-like. But the same symbol was repeated on a label in his boots, in his trousers, even on the waistband of his underpants – and in all those places it had a star on it, not those circles. She ran her finger over one of those symbols – then became aware of the inappropriateness of fondling this strange man’s underwear, and flushed red.

The kettle started spitting and she put the clothes down and turned to make the tea. She could wash them later, when the fire was hot for cooking dinner and she’d got Jim to bring more water in from the pump. She dreamed of getting taps fitted up in the house. Now, that would be wonderful.

‘There you are, love,’ she said, handing Jim his tea.

‘You’re not having a cuppa?’ he asked.

‘I’ll come back down for it,’ she said brightly, pouring another cup for the stranger and diluting it with a little cool water. ‘I’ll just see if Grayson’s awake and if he wants this.’

‘Aye, all right,’ Jim nodded, looking up at the ceiling again with that slightly distrustful look.

She hoped he wouldn’t end up causing trouble. It was like Jim to get scared and back out of things.

When she entered his room Grayson was sleeping peacefully. His face looked different in sleep – far less severe, more childlike. She put the cup down quietly on the chair beside the bed, thinking it would be good to find a little table to put there. She touched his forehead very lightly with her hand and felt that he was hot. He had been since they had found him and he had said he thought it was natural, but it just didn’t seem right. But what did seem right about him?

She saw the black object beside him in the bed and very quietly and carefully she picked it up. It was strange. Heavier than it should be by its size. As unnatural as his temperature. The black stuff looked like shellac or that strange new Bakelite she’d seen on show in town. But it wasn’t. It was harder. It looked stronger. When she tapped her fingernail on it it felt – different. Just different. And there were those coloured bits that were set under something clear that couldn’t be glass. It just couldn’t be. She turned it in her hands and turned it again. There was a raw bit where it looked as if it had been torn from something else. What _was_ it? It was the only important thing that Grayson possessed, it seemed. It was no fairy thing.

She nestled the object back beside his arm and stepped back to lean against the wall by the door, smoothing down her apron with her hands and watching that long, lean, sleeping man. There was nothing right about him. Nothing at all.

******

Grayson’s eyes flickered open as Elsie exited the room. He felt that black object in between his arm and his body. He had felt her take it but had sensed who it was in the room and had had the presence of mind to stay still and quiet. He could feel her studying it, studying him. It seemed natural to be able to pick up her feelings and thoughts at a muted level, as if he were some kind of empath.

He lifted that black thing up again, studying it again as she had, as if he could somehow pick up her impressions just from touching it. He had sensed her confusion at it. He was just as confused. He closed his eyes, trying to remember. Trying hard.

_Threat. Standing somewhere, under shelter. His hands closed around that thing. Uncertainty. Wondering what was right to do. Then ripping it out with his hands and running, running. Threat. Shouts. Pain and running and falling and running again. The cold and the rain drenching over him. Trying to get to the gate. The gate the only option. The only option..._

He set the object down and just looked at it. It was familiar, yet unfamiliar. Very unfamiliar. But it had more relevance to him, it seemed, than the objects around him here – the turned wood and woven linen and the glass-paned windows. He felt odd in this white-cream shirt with its fussy white buttons. He wasn’t used to wearing such things. He wasn’t used to any of this, he was sure.

He picked up the cup and drank the tea that had been left for him. It was cooler this time, less bitter and altogether more palatable. Now _that_ was familiar. That taste. It wasn’t coffee, but it was something that he knew.

He touched a hand to the wound on his head, wondering if it was that that had stolen so many things about himself. Perhaps if he focussed, perhaps if he meditated, perhaps he could glean something back out of the cavern of his mind.

He set the cup down and steepled his fingers instinctively in front of his face. The shape that they made was as familiar as his reflection, as familiar as strange things like that name, _Jim_ , and the _Grayson_ that he had clung to. He stared at that steepled shape, trying to lose himself in it, to exclude all the small noises from downstairs and retreat into only that which was within his own mind.

_Again he was lost in that strange place. People chasing him. People, strangers, armoured things. Pain. Pain that he tried to push away. Run. The need to run. That object hard in his hand, ripped from something bigger. That all important part, the controller, the thing that explained it all..._

_Again he was lost. Rings arcing up across the sky and scudding clouds and rain hitting him. Other men in clothes like his, red and yellow and blue, running. All running._

_Make for the gate. Get to the gate, Spock. You must get to the gate. The only escape. Get to the gate..._

He opened his eyes, startled by that one blank fact. Spock. That was a name. That had been a man shouting at him, calling out that name. He had run, faster than the others, away from their shouts and towards that strange metal structure, that oddly ethereal thing that sat on the landscape like a sculpture and showed him his escape from pain and capture and death and – something worse...

 


	5. Chapter 5

In the night he woke with a start, heart pounding, another dream of running lingering in his mind. The room he was in was dark, the real dark that came in a place with no automatic lighting to cast shadows and seep into other places. He stood up from the bed with the knowledge that because he had seen this room in daylight, he was quite aware of its layout in darkness. He walked to the window and opened the catch, breathing in the cooler air of night and letting his eyes get used to the minimal light from the crescent moon. He could make out trees and the shapes of the hills against the slightly lighter sky.

He looked up to the stars above and felt an intimate familiarity with each of them, their names, their magnitudes, their distances from this small planet. Again he felt that they were too far away, too far out of reach. They were too small in this great sky. There must be a way of getting up there. There must be a way...

He exhaled slowly. He hadn’t pinned down the exact year, but he knew that he was decades away even from the first tentative space-flight. What was there in this time that could help him return home, when he didn’t know where or when home was?

 _Spock_ _. H_ e mulled that name over in his mind again. It was _his_ name. It was familiar as Grayson had been. Perhaps Grayson Spock. That sounded like a name. It sounded right.

He heard a noise outside, and his awareness sharpened. Probably just a sheep clattering against something. Why did he feel hunted? That object he held was part of it. He had taken it. It was important. The person he had taken it from would want it back – that much was certain. But did they have the power to follow him here?

He saw a light then, flashing out in the darkness, lighting up a whole swathe of one of the fields a few hundred yards from the house. He heard the sheep running, but he couldn’t see who was holding the light. He didn’t think there were lights capable of shining out so brightly in this time. His urge was to shut the window, but he didn’t – he just moved back a little so that if the light turned this way it would not strike his face. But would they have sensors? Would they be able to detect his unique life-signs on this planet?

No. He reassured himself. If they had sensors capable of picking up his life-signs they wouldn’t be searching with lights – they would have come straight to this house. They hadn’t had such equipment on Ney’ron, he was certain, or they would have picked up him and the captain as they –

He drew in breath sharply. _The captain..._ He thought of a man in gold, a man a little shorter than he, blonde and pink-skinned, and – _Jim!_

He staggered back, suddenly dizzy, into the darkness of the room. He felt for his bed and sank down onto it, pressing a hand to his head. Jim. Jim sitting opposite him at a grey table. Jim smiling and speaking. Jim sitting in a wide black chair at the centre of a – a control room. A control centre. A place where everything happened. There were memories there, so close, that swam just out of reach when he tried to focus on them.

He pushed the dizziness away, determined to focus on what he needed to focus on. It was gratifying that fragments of memory were slipping back, but he needed to know more about what was happening outside. He went back to the window and watched cautiously, seeing that light sweeping over the contours of the field again, to and fro. He stood still, listening intently. Whoever they were they were too far away to hear, though. There was no hint of conversation on the summer wind.

The lights turned and turned again, and then eventually cut off. He saw something else – a dimmer light – and heard a low hum, but he couldn’t tell what it may be. After that there was nothing.

After a time he turned back to the bed again, feeling the need for rest settling down over him. His injuries required sleep to heal. He knew that. He left the window open, though, and could not relax fully as he lay there in bed. He felt hunted. He lay letting scenes and sounds drift through his head. _Spock_ _, his name, being called out as he ran. That sculptural, arching gateway. Running at the limit of his ability, clutching that black device, desperate to get to the gateway in time to escape._

In time he fell into a half-asleep, half-awake state where memories unfolded. He was standing in a room in a city on Ney’ron, aware that he was trespassing, aware that if he were caught he might lose his life, or worse. Scanning across some kind of console. Touching the sleek black and coloured protrusions with his fingertips. Trying to decipher words and symbols and knowing that he had very little time, very little time... He was already bruised and injured. He and his friends, his shipmates – all of them had suffered. They had split up on escape, split up on getting into this part of the building. They had to find that object and remove it for the good of – to save – What? How could a small black object be so important? It must be important that it was preserved, or would he not have destroyed it? He felt as if he were holding the fate of civilisations in his hands.

And the gate. Running towards the gate. Knowing he might never return, but the safety of the object was paramount. He had to get it away. He had to hide it. He had to imagine the most unlikely place, and – Yes! That was it. The gate responded to thought. In those pulsing seconds as he ran for the gate he had to pull a place and a time out of his mind. He had to think of somewhere that was not obvious, nothing drawn on his history or his family. He had to clear everything out, and in that moment of running he had fixed his mind on one place and then touched his fingertips to his own mind and –

At that he sat up in bed, almost knocking his head on the sloping ceiling, his lips parted in wordless shock. It was not the blow to the head, or any other trauma. It was a hasty, vicious, clumsy attempt to stop them from reading his location. He had picked the one place that he could not imagine them ever guessing from his files or his history or even his memories, and had tried to erase the rest. He had fixed that in his mind and purged the rest, and then he had leapt into the vortex of the gate...

But it hadn’t worked. He could see that now. If it had worked, there wouldn’t be lights out there on the hill. There wouldn’t be people searching. And they could blend in. He remembered that now. There was very little to distinguish the Ney’roni’i from the people who inhabited this planet. They would blend in better than he would, and now they were searching for him.

He closed his eyes, trying to resist the impulse to stand up and run. He couldn’t outrun them, not in a strange place, a strange time, with no money or resources or local knowledge to hand. They would be sure to be prepared. They could have come through the gate at any time. They could have spent years in preparing for this only to arrive at the same time that he did in this place in the past. They were far more familiar with this type of travel than he.

He had to stay still. The worst thing he could do now would be to go out on that hillside while they were there, searching. He had to stay hidden until he had worked out why he had chosen this place and time, and how he could protect himself and that strange black object of which he still couldn’t remember the purpose. It was vital to remember. Absolutely vital.


	6. Chapter 6

‘Summat’s scared the sheep,’ was the first thing that Jim said in the morning to Elsie.

He had slipped out of bed while she was still asleep, leaving her to sleep in a little longer before she got up to light the stove and do her morning’s work. Their guest was still asleep in his bed even by the time that Jim got back in from his morning rounds.

‘How do you mean?’ she asked him. She tested the heat of the iron quickly with a wet finger and then set it back to heat some more. She didn’t know how hot it should be for those strange clothes that Grayson had worn, but she reckoned it needed to be hotter than this.

‘I don’t know,’ Jim said with a shrug. ‘Just summat’s unsettled them. They were all down by the stream, huddled together, like. Did you hear anything in the night? Fox, mebbe?’

‘I didn’t hear a thing,’ she said, testing the iron again. This time it seemed hot enough and she started to smooth out the tattered clothes that she had washed last night. Once they were all ironed she could tackle mending what she could.

‘Another thing – someone’s been into that hut,’ Jim continued, his forehead furrowed. ‘Messed up the bed and thrown the Bible down on the floor and everything. That Grayson hasn’t stirred, has he?’

‘No, he hasn’t stirred,’ Elsie reassured him. ‘Besides, the door was bolted all night and you know how it needs oiling. We would have heard if he’d tried to open it.’

Jim lifted the lid off the pot on the stove, and recoiled from the steam.

‘Porridge, in this weather, Else?’

‘Well, I can’t feed him on bacon and eggs or toast and butter,’ she shrugged. ‘What else can I give him? Dry bread? Porridge without milk will have to do. I can’t think of anything else.’

‘Porridge, as I recall, is cereal such as rolled oats boiled in milk or water,’ said a deep voice from the stairway, and she turned in surprise to see Grayson standing there, looking rather self-conscious in the borrowed pyjamas he wore. ‘Boiled in water, it would be quite acceptable,’ he said.

‘You’re awake, then!’ Elsie smiled. ‘I thought I’d have to be bringing you your breakfast in bed.’

He walked into the room, still favouring his injured ankle, his face grave but a certain lightness about his eyes.

‘Do you ever smile, lad?’ Jim suddenly asked.

‘Only with sufficient provocation,’ Grayson replied steadily.

‘Do you ever cry, then?’ Jim continued.

Ordinarily Elsie would have told him to stop needling, but she was watching Grayson, fascinated by what his response may be. He looked uncomfortable, as uncomfortable as it seemed possible for him to look – but it was true that she hadn’t noticed any strong feelings from the man since they found him in that hut.

‘My people follow a philosophy of logic,’ Grayson said after a moment’s pause. ‘Emotions are rarely logical.’

‘You have no room in your heart for love, for happiness?’ Elsie asked, moving a little closer in her curiosity. It seemed such a sad thing.

Grayson shook his head very slightly. ‘I did not say that,’ he replied enigmatically. ‘It is – not something of which we speak.’

‘Well, I’m sorry if we seem to be pressing you,’ Elsie smiled. His words were running through her head. _My people. Something of which we speak_ _._ He had remembered more, then. Last night there had not been a hint that he had a ‘people’ or a philosophy to draw on. But he would explain things in time, she felt. She shot a warning look at Jim now, as she ladled porridge into a deep bowl. ‘There. I hope it’s not too hot. Would you like sugar?’

He took the bowl and spoon that she handed to him and he sniffed the contents delicately.

‘No sugar, thank you,’ he said.

He sat down at the table, watching with some interest as Elsie put a pan onto the stove and started to lay out rashers of bacon and crack eggs into it. She could almost feel his gaze, it was so intense. It gave her an odd feeling between her shoulder blades as she turned from the slowly warming pan and started to iron out those tattered clothes with the hot iron.

She heard Jim pull up a chair at the table and ask in a low voice, ‘You weren’t out and about last night, were you lad?’

She looked up to see Grayson raising an elegant eyebrow. He swallowed his first spoonful of porridge and then shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘However, I was aware of a disturbance.’

‘You were?’ Jim asked, and Elsie focussed her attention fully on the stranger.

‘There were lights in the field,’ he said, his voice so low it was hard to catch. ‘Someone was searching. I believe they were searching for me.’

‘Now, why would they be searching for you?’ Jim asked, obviously intrigued.

‘I found my memory clearer last night,’ Grayson continued in a quiet, deep voice. ‘I am more certain of who I am and why I am here. Since you have given me shelter it is right that I confide in you.’

Elsie carried on pressing out the clothes, reheating the iron, pressing again, but listening all the while. It took her by surprise when Grayson said, ‘Elsie, is it possible for you to leave your work and join us?’

‘Oh,’ she said. She had been half expecting him to suggest that she leave the room. ‘I’ll just get the kettle boiling,’ she said.

‘Tea accompanies everything,’ Grayson commented, and she laughed.

‘I reckon it does, at that,’ she said, pulling the kettle onto the heat and pushing the frying pan aside. She dusted her hands off on her apron and sat down at the table, close to Jim, where she could look into Grayson’s dark, intense eyes. ‘Go on, then,’ she said, smiling.

His eyes became veiled for a moment. His hands were together on the table, his long fingers steepled as if he were using them as a point to focus upon.

‘It is difficult to explain,’ he said steadily. ‘It may be difficult for you to believe.’

He looked up again, and again Elsie felt as if she were being pierced by those eyes.

‘You have said that you do not believe in men from outer space, Elsie,’ he said, and the depth and seriousness of his voice magnetised her.

‘No more I do,’ she began, almost automatically.

One of those elegant eyebrows lifted up again. ‘In the strictest sense, I am not a man,’ he said, ‘although I am male. In the strictest sense I am not from outer space. I am from a planet, just like you – but not the planet that you are from. By that definition, I am not a man from outer space, and – perhaps – you may believe in me.’

Was there a slight hint of humour sparkling in his eyes? Elsie almost bridled at the thought that he was laughing at her, but there was a depth of intention in his words that held her steady. Jim shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and she glanced at him to gauge his reaction.

‘I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ she began, although she was afraid in some way that she _did_ understand.

‘No, neither do I,’ said Jim, a little defensively. ‘I mean, a joke’s a joke, but – ’

‘I rarely joke,’ Grayson replied in a level voice. He certainly didn’t sound as if he were joking now. ‘What you must understand, Jim, and you must understand, Elsie, is that in years to come, much will change. Men are currently building aircraft that can escape the surface of this planet and enter the free atmosphere. In the future they will build craft that will escape this planet entirely. They will reach the moon – and beyond.’

‘You’re trying to tell us you _are_ a man from Mars?’ Jim asked suspiciously.

He shook his head. ‘Not at all. Mars is a mere stone’s throw compared to the distances travelled by my people – and _your_ people, in the future. I am not from your place. Neither am I from your time. I – am still suffering imperfect recall, but I must explain what became clear last night.’

The kettle was boiling but Elsie ignored it, caught in staring at Grayson, caught between disbelief and each small piece of evidence that she kept adding up in her head. The strangeness of his blood. His odd, constrained manner. The shape of his ears and the sharpness of his face. His clothes, and that object he had carried. None of those fit into any rational explanation she could think of, and when the rational was thrown out, almost anything was possible.

‘If you can take as a given what I have told you, then it will be easier to explain,’ he said, looking between the two of them.

‘Aye, carry on,’ Jim said rather gruffly, looking at Elsie with a half-scared look.

Elsie nodded. ‘Carry on. I’m not saying I believe it all, mind you, but I’ll take it as given for now.’

Grayson nodded slowly.

‘I still cannot recall the exact function or purpose of that object that I carried,’ he began, ‘but I know now it is of vital importance, either to my people, or to the people from whom I took it.’

‘Then you’re a thief,’ Jim interjected.

Grayson shook his head with a hint of impatience. ‘I do not believe so. But somehow – by some device – I managed to escape from their time, from their home, and travelled to this place, to a time far in my own past. I tried to hide my intentions from them. I believe they are able to read thoughts. I tried to erase my thoughts so that they could not follow me, but I didn’t understand enough about their technology, and I have failed. I believe that the lights on the hill were their lights, and that the disturbance in the hut was also due to their searching.’

Jim’s head jerked up. ‘You weren’t in the room when I told Elsie about that,’ he said quickly.

Grayson lifted one eyebrow, again with that rather amused look in his eyes. ‘My hearing is significantly sharper than your own,’ he said. ‘I was leaving the bedroom when you told Elsie about the hut.’

‘Listen,’ Jim said suddenly. ‘Is Else in danger through this? If she is – ’

‘I do not know,’ Grayson said flatly.

‘I don’t care,’ Elsie cut over him. ‘We took you in for better or worse, and here you are.’

‘If you are in danger, I should leave,’ Grayson said steadily, ‘but I know little of this time and place. I have no money. I have no contemporary clothing. I do not know where to go or what to do. My only hope is that somehow my people locate me, or – ’

He trailed off, and Elsie was struck suddenly by the emptiness in his eyes. Suppose she did believe all that he said? Suppose he were an alien, a man from the future, lost here in a past he didn’t own, hunted for something that he had taken? How could he possibly survive in this place, alone, for the rest of his life? A great sadness overcame her, and she turned quickly to pick up the over-boiling kettle and pour the water into the teapot.

‘First thing we need to do is make you safe,’ she said in a stalwart tone, carrying the teapot and a handful of mugs over to the table. ‘No one need know who you are. You can be my cousin. How’s that? My cousin from down south. Folks’d believe that of me. They know I’ve family down there. Jim and I can put it about in town as how I’ve got my cousin visiting. You and Jim are enough of a size that you can wear some of his clothes. You can help us on the farm if you like, when you’re healed. Jim?’ she asked, suddenly remembering to look to her husband.

‘Aye,’ Jim said with a degree of discomfort. ‘Aye, we can do all that.’

‘I am being hunted,’ Grayson said in a flat tone. ‘These people have followed me from far away. There is some kind of – gate – a portal – through which I travelled and they followed. They will have technology that you could not imagine. It may be that no matter how you try to disguise my presence, they will still find me. They will find me despite you, or through you. I cannot guarantee your safety.’

Elsie felt fear starting up at his cold, flat tone.

‘Then what can we do to help?’ she asked.

‘I do not know,’ Grayson said, shaking his head. ‘I need to get away from here. This is where they expect me to be. And perhaps if I can investigate the device I took – perhaps if I can understand it better – I may be able to nullify it. I may be able to work out how to get home.’

Elsie looked up at him at that. Everything he had said sounded based in reason and logic – except those last few words. They sounded as if they had been spun from a desperate hope.

She pushed her chair back and went to look at the old china pot on the mantelpiece, leafing through the few notes and the various shillings and thruppences and pennies in there.

‘I think I’ve got an idea,’ she said. ‘As long as Jim will go along with it, I can help you to get somewhere safe.’

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

They were going from house to house in the town. Elsie had heard reports of them from the postman that morning, and from the shopkeepers when she had walked down to buy food. They wore dark suits and had dark hair, and although in a way they looked just like any other inhabitants of this country, there was still something odd about them. People thought they were preachers or foreigners come looking for work. Some were so unnerved by them that they just shut the door on them without asking what they wanted, but the men and women ended up coming in anyway, somehow. They always got in somehow.

Grayson had heard all of this on Elsie’s return from town. Obviously they thought he had gone for shelter where there were more people, perhaps the prospect of jobs or begging or a doctor’s help. They had been seen at the station and staring at carts and carriages and the few motor cars that roared about up here. They were checking everything. It would only take so long for them to start coming to the outlying houses and farms and knocking on the doors there, and how would Elsie and Jim resist them if they turned up here?

‘I will need to take everything I arrived here with,’ he said, holding the newly mended black trousers in his hands and inspecting the repair work. ‘This is excellent, Elsie. I thank you for your work.’

Elsie smiled. ‘Well, I couldn’t do anything near as good with the shirt,’ she said, handing it to him. ‘But the trousers were much easier to patch.’

Grayson looked at the top with its patches of mis-matched fabric. Still, it was clean and it was whole, and it would serve if he needed it. He wondered briefly if he would ever need it again, or whether it would be nothing but a symbol of what he had lost. He touched his finger to the silver badge on the blue fabric and it jolted memory in him again. Sciences. Those intertwined circles were for sciences. The repeated badge on his other items of clothing spoke of the whole, of the organisation he was in. But those intertwined circles meant sciences.

A scent came to him from memory that held him for a moment. Then the feeling of sitting in a high-backed chair, his hands on a console. The memory came and went so quickly that he could hardly quantify it. It would come, though. He was certain of that. He would not have blocked off his memory so catastrophically that he could never get it back. To do so would be illogical.

He folded the shirt carefully and put it into the suitcase that Elsie had pulled out of one of the cupboards for him. She had brought back a pair of second-hand boots from the cobbler’s in town that fitted well enough, and sought out some clothes of Jim’s that were about the right size. Now, with his dark slacks, as Elsie had called them, and his white shirt with neat cuffs and collar, he looked enough like any other man in this place.

‘Except for those ears,’ Elsie mused, shaking her head. ‘And I’ll need to give you a hair cut, mind. You stick out like anything with that fringe.’

‘There will be time before we leave?’ Grayson asked.

Elsie glanced sideways at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was almost ten o’clock in the evening and would be some time before it was truly dark. Dinner had been eaten and almost everything was packed and sorted except for Grayson’s newly mended clothes.

‘There’ll be time,’ she nodded. She looked sideways at her husband. ‘Jim, you’re sure you don’t mind?’

‘Aye, I’m sure I don’t mind,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’d take him myself, but – ’

‘Don’t be daft – you know you need to take care of the farm,’ Elsie dismissed him. ‘In a few weeks you can arrange for Alf to watch things for a couple of days and you can come down and fetch me, but you can’t leave now. The hay’ll be ready soon, and besides, _they’ll_ suspect.’

Grayson nodded at that. It was almost definite that any strangeness like a farmer abandoning his farm would be suspect. A wife going to visit relatives in the south was an entirely different matter. Jim only needed to tell concerned questioners that her aunt was ill and her leaving would be understood completely.

******

By the time dark fell Grayson was dressed very neatly in a suit and tie, his hair carefully styled to resemble any man in the town, and a hat on his head that came down just low enough to disguise his pointed ears and slanted eyebrows. He stood looking at himself in the mirror, analysing his appearance. He didn’t think that at first glance anyone would notice his differences. If he was compelled to remove his hat – well, he would just have to think of a plausible excuse, if someone commented. The last conclusion people were liable to draw was that he was an alien from the future.

He closed his eyes briefly, shutting out the reflection and everything around him. He badly felt the need to meditate, to try to pull back more of his ravaged memory, but he would not have that chance for a good few hours, at the very least. Perhaps if he did remember more – perhaps if he could remember the purpose of the device that he carried – then maybe, maybe, he could work out some way of returning home.

‘It’s almost time,’ Elsie said in a low voice from behind him, and his eyes snapped open.

He turned to see Jim watching him closely.

‘I will take care of her,’ he promised, and Jim nodded, making a grunt of acknowledgement.

‘Aye, you better,’ he said.

‘Come on,’ Elsie urged him, catching hold of his elbow. She already had her case in her hand. ‘We’d better hurry. It’s not going to be quick going in the dark.’

Grayson nodded, picking up his own case. He averted his gaze tactfully as Elsie hugged her husband and kissed him goodbye, and then followed her out of the door.

She moved with surprising agility across the dark farmyard. Grayson found it easier to see in the dim light than she did, but she knew the ground and she was not walking with a sprained ankle that was still healing. One of Jim’s walking sticks helped with that.

‘I can suppress the pain,’ he had told Elsie.

‘But you don’t want to do that,’ she replied firmly. ‘That pain’s telling you something. You try to walk on that as normal and you’ll make it worse – cripple yourself maybe. Just take the stick and listen to your body.’

He had bowed to her medical wisdom, and taken the stick.

Elsie took him out of the yard and silently up into the closest field. The air was still warm from the summer sun and the scent of dried earth and grass rose around them. Sheep startled and scattered and she paused, touching a hand to Grayson’s arm to still him too.

‘Don’t want them to start bleating,’ she murmured.

They waited for the movement to calm, then walked on. It took half an hour to get through the dark fields and up onto the open, moor-like land, but finally Elsie stopped by some kind of pole and set her suitcase down.

‘You see the rails?’ she asked.

Grayson nodded. The thin moonlight was just enough to show the two rails stretching into the distance.

‘It always stops at this signal to let the night mail come past,’ she said in a low voice. ‘There’s only one line through the tunnel. Jack’s expecting us. He’ll let us onto the guard van and we can take our seats proper at the next station. He’s a good man. He won’t let on.’

Grayson nodded again, silent. The silence up here was so great it was enveloping. It was something of a shame that he would not see this place in daylight. But his ears could catch small sounds from further away. There was something growing louder, a rhythmic sound of power, the clattering of metal on metal.

‘It’s coming,’ Elsie said after a while, and he knew her human ears had caught the sound too. ‘Best stand back a bit from the rails, just in case. That night mail’ll thunder through, and I’m not sure which side ours stops on.’

Obediently he took a few steps backwards, looking along the tracks to see if he could catch a glimpse of the coming train. There was little to see at first but light glimmering far along the rails, but then the sound grew and the sense of power grew, and he began to feel as if the sound of the engine was inside him, filling his chest. He listened to the huffing of the steam as it pulled its train of carriages closer, and finally slowed and came to a halt in a screeching and clattering cacophony of sound. The scent of smoke and sulphur filled the air.

‘Here, come on,’ Elsie said, grabbing at his elbow and pulling him forward. ‘Need to get down to the guard van. It won’t be stopped longer than it has to be. And watch out for that night mail! We’ve got to cross the rails!’

He picked up his suitcase and half-ran after her, the giving heather and moss of the moorland threatening to take his balance away from him. For now he was glad of the walking stick. They passed carriage after lit-up carriage, until they came to a car that seemed entirely dark.

‘Let me have that stick,’ Elsie said. Taking it, she beat on the wooden side of the car with a stentorian series of blows. After a moment the door was rolled open and a hand was thrust out.

‘Come on up, Elsie lass,’ a man’s voice said, and she passed up her case before catching hold of that hand. Grayson helped to lift her up and then passed up his own case and hauled himself into the van.

‘Only got a moment before we’re off,’ the man said. There was a shrill whistle and the sound of another engine building, coming closer, and then pushing past over the rails where they had just been standing with a power that made the guard’s van rattle and shake.

‘Here, come over here,’ Elsie said, tugging at Grayson’s sleeve to bring him closer to a lit lamp, where he could sit on any number of trunks on the van’s floor. He put his case neatly aside and laid the walking stick down and exhaled, stretching out his sore leg before him. He was aware of the guard shouting something and blowing his whistle, and then the door rumbled closed again, and the train lurched, and moved on.

‘You and Jim are going to owe me for this, you know,’ the man said in a good humoured voice, coming back over toward the light. ‘It’ll be my job if I’m found out. What’s it all about anyway?’

‘Jack, this is Grayson,’ Elsie said with a smile. ‘Grayson, Jack is a very good friend.’

‘I am very grateful for your assistance,’ Grayson said, and he meant it. This was a very curious way to travel, with the rocking and shaking and what seemed like tremendous noise, but it was getting him away from his enemies, and no one had seen him leave. ‘Is your job really in danger?’

Jack grinned, taking off his cap and seating himself beside Grayson and Elsie. He laboriously pulled a pipe out of his pocket and filled it and set himself to lighting the friable tobacco in the bowl.

‘I reckon I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Besides, you can slip out at the signal at Grantholme and over onto the road and walk back into the station and join the train like any other passenger. No one’ll know. You’ll only be in this here van for – ’ He pulled out a watch and studied it. ‘Thirteen minutes, at most,’ he said. ‘It’s just through the tunnel and on to the next station. That’s all.’

‘I am grateful,’ Grayson said again.

‘You know you mustn’t tell anyone about this, Jack,’ Elsie said in a low voice, as if she thought they might be overheard. ‘You know those people that’ve been going around town? Don’t breathe a word to those people.’

‘On my honour,’ Jack said. ‘Not a word. But what’s this about, Elsie. I mean – ’ He lowered his voice to a point where perhaps a human would not be able to catch his words, but to Grayson they were acutely clear. ‘What is he? A spy or summat?’

Elsie laughed. ‘Nowt like that,’ she promised. ‘It’s best you don’t know, Jack. What you don’t know, you can’t tell. It’s nothing below the law. Nothing like that. He just needs to get away from here without those strangers knowing.’

Jack looked sideways at Grayson, and he could see the suspicion in his eyes. No matter what he did to disguise himself, he would never look quite like a person from this place. But the suspicion softened and faded away, and then Jack nodded, pulling in a drag on his pipe and exhaling a slow cloud of smoke.


	8. Chapter 8

Seated in an otherwise empty compartment, with their luggage stowed in the racks above their heads and Elsie sat half-dozing on the seat opposite, this was the first chance that Grayson had to meditate. It was past midnight and in other parts of the train there were sleeper compartments that held far more comfort, but Elsie had not the money for that and Grayson was grateful enough just for the seat beneath him and the fact that with every mile he was closer to some kind of safety.

He rested his head back against the antimacassar and steepled his fingers in front of his face. He began to shut out the stale scent of tobacco smoke, the swaying of the carriage, the clatter and clack as the wheels ran over the rails, the fierce sound of the engine up ahead. He focussed his eyes on the point where his fingers met, and let his mind relax. Whatever he had done, it could be undone. He had that name, Spock. He had the Ney’roni’i and those rings arching up through the sky. He had Jim, _his_ Jim, with blonde hair and a gold shirt.

He drew the memory of that object he carried into his mind. Right now it was safely wrapped up in cloth in the suitcase above his head, but he didn’t need to have it before him to bring it to mind. He focussed on it, extending his memory of how it looked to envelop other things of the same design. The room he had taken it from. The buildings, the people...

He unclasped his hands and raised one to his face, touching his fingers to the points which he knew were special, knew were sensitive. He closed his eyes and began to fall deep into his mind, past the barriers that he had pulled up, past all the defences. He pulled the walls away, piece by piece, and it was as if light was flooding through the gaps and illuminating places in his mind that he had forgotten.

Jim. The mission to Ney’ron. The mission, to find the device that the Ney’roni’i had taken, to find the portal device they had stolen from their neighbours the Al-sha. Find. Retrieve. Destroy. Under the guise of a diplomatic mission... He remembered now. He remembered...

_The transporter beam releasing him. He saw the dark blue sky and the glittering arc of the planetary rings rising outside the atmosphere. There was a reception party to meet them. Outstretched hands making a gesture of peace. Jim beside him. Chekov, and Del Sarto of life sciences just behind. Two men from security, Keenan and Bradshaw, standing staunch and ready at the back. They had been told not to touch their weapons. Not unless needed._

_He did not agree entirely. Not with the subterfuge. But it was necessary to retrieve the device. With it the Ney’roni’i could create their own portals. They could do all manner of evil. They could wipe out the Al-sha from whom they had stolen the device. Wipe out the whole Federation, if they so wished. They had already done enough. Stolen enough technology to make them a formidable force. Shown enough aggression, killed enough people. It had to be done. Had to be taken. Subterfuge was the only way._

_The Ney’roni’i requesting their communicators and phasers. For reasons of peace, reasons of trust. But there was no trust on either side. Eyes everywhere. Everyone was watching everyone else._

_So... He had seen the room that contained the device. He had slipped away as Jim created a diversion. He had only a few seconds to identify and remove it, so he had ripped it from its moorings and held it hard in his fist, and ran. But with no communicator he could not beam up. He ran. They didn’t dare shoot him for fear of damaging the device. A situation had erupted akin to an Earth game of rugby. Running. Ney’roni’i, both their guides and guards in enveloping armour, pounding after him. Shouting, looking back, seeing the others trying to hold them off. Being slammed to the floor. Holding onto the device with all his strength as hands and blades and boots impacted with soft flesh. Ripping away, running again, making for the gate, for the gate in all its glory, there at the centre of the compound. It was the only way. The only way..._

_It had been a split-second realisation, a split-second decision, and now it became clear. He knew how the gateway worked. He had researched all this thoroughly before beam-down, been briefed by the Al-sha. The gateway was capable of registering and recording the contents of a mind in a nanosecond. That was how it could send a person so precisely to a location and point in time of their choice. So to use the gateway was to give the Ney’roni’i access to everything in his mind – Starfleet codes, defence plans, schematics of the ship, every thing his vast Vulcan mind knew. To not use the gateway was to allow the Ney’roni’i to capture him, retrieve the device, and become one of the most deadly civilisations in the galaxy. He had taken the third option, the only viable option open to him..._

Spock opened his eyes abruptly, seeing again the steeple of his fingers and the slumbering woman opposite him. A door that had been closed was open. There was no abrupt severing between his life before and his life now, just a seamless movement from his life as he had known it, and through that gate, until he found himself lying on the dry earth at the edge of a village deep in Earth’s past. He had not, as he had briefly thought, erased his memories so as to conceal his destination, but so as to protect his people and his galaxy. The one thing the Ney’roni’i had been able to read was his destination, and that was why they had followed him here so quickly.

He closed his eyes again, feeling the rumbling movement of the train pushing into his skull through the seat. There was still an ache at the side of his head where he had been hit. He remembered now it had been struck by the boot of a Ney’roni’i guard, perhaps hoping to knock him unconscious. So they had followed him here. He could only hope that they – or he – would perform no drastic action that might change the future. He had already taken Elsie away from her home. He would have to be sure to keep her safe.

He shook his head slowly. The confusion of time travel was difficult even for his Vulcan mind to comprehend. He had encountered enough of those problems when he had leapt through the Guardian of Forever. That time, they had been compelled to let a woman die... But there was very little he could do, now he was here, but try to impact upon this time as little as possible.

The truth of that settled through him slowly. After he had destroyed or secured the device he carried, after he had exhausted his options for trying to return home, his prime duty would be to dispose of himself in a manner which would provoke no investigation. He could not live in this world and risk altering so much.

The train continued to rock and rumble through the night. Looking through the windows there were only rarely lights piercing the darkness. No cities lit up like festival lights as he knew from his century; just a reaching, peaceful darkness. There had been a reason why he had chosen this time to jump into. It had been remote, far from everything the Ney’roni’i knew. But it was a time and a place fixed into his mind from a photograph that Jim had shown him the night before they had left on that mission. It was a picture of one of Jim’s distant ancestors who lived in that place where he had found himself sprawling on the ground. If he had not so completely blocked his own memories he would have remembered the faces in that photograph and what Jim had said about it. He would have avoided impacting on their lives.

‘ _T_ _hat’s one of my namesakes there, Spock,’_ Jim had said. _‘There are quite a few Jim Kirks in my tree. That’s one of them, and his wife. They look nice, don’t they?’_

Spock turned his gaze on Elsie again. She was still asleep, her mouth part open, her hair untidy where it had been pushed against the back of the seat. She was slumping sideways, and he was struck with how tired she must be. She had been working all day to prepare things for their escape. He stood up and very carefully put a hand on her shoulder and one at the side of her head, moving her just enough that she slowly slipped down until she was lying on the seat. She was small enough that she could almost lie out straight. He looked into her sleeping face and wondered if he could see Jim’s face in there. If he saw any such resemblance it would almost surely be fancy, but he thought there was something about the forehead and the eyes. He would have to take care of her. From the loose dates that Jim had mentioned it was certain that she would not start her family for some years yet, but it was vital that she should do so without disruption to the time line.

He regained his seat and fell back into his thoughts again. He was a long, long way away from home. His only connection between his rightful present and this past was the photograph that Jim had held, and the woman before him in the train compartment. Perhaps somehow he could use that connection to get home.


	9. Chapter 9

It was as night gave way to the first hints of dawn that the train began to slow. Through the window Spock could see the low forms of buildings rising up in geometric shapes against the sky. Layers of red-brick terraced houses gave way to larger, older buildings of pale stone. The streets that crossed beneath the railway’s viaducts that were almost empty of life. Steeples of churches rose up between the buildings and everywhere trees greened the spaces between the roofs.

Elsie was still sleeping. Spock had no watch, but he could see by hers that this must be their destination. They were not more than a few minutes before the scheduled arrival time.

The train halted some way out of the station with a great hiss of released pressure, and Spock sat looking out of the window, waiting. From the few other stations this sleeper train had stopped at he assumed they were waiting for signals to change or for the platform to become clear for this train to come in. He touched Elsie’s arm lightly, and as she woke another engine, so dirty it appeared black, steamed past with a train of empty, open wagons rumbling behind.

Elsie sat up, blinking, touching a hand to her hair to smooth it down.

‘I believe we are almost at our destination,’ Spock said.

She blinked again, looking at her watch and nodding.

‘Reckon we must be,’ she said.

Spock stood, using one hand to steady himself while he hauled down the two small suitcases from the luggage rack overhead.

‘You’ve not slept at all, have you?’ Elsie asked, watching him.

Spock shook his head, taking a moment to assess his reflection in the window to see that his hat was straight and low enough to disguise his problematic ears. He looked like quite a different person in the dark felt hat and the jacket, shirt and tie. He could recall now quite clearly his usual appearance, bare-headed, his hairstyle significantly different and his look quite altered by the simple blue tunic that fitted his station on the _Enterprise._

‘I do not require as much sleep as you,’ he said in a low voice.

He glanced through the window again. The train was still stationary and there was still little movement as yet in the city streets. Barely a chimney had smoke rising from it.

‘Elsie, I gained an opportunity to meditate while you were sleeping,’ he said quietly, conscious of the thin walls that partitioned compartment from compartment. ‘I have a complete memory of who I am and from where I originate. My name is Spock.’

At that her nose wrinkled almost imperceptibly, and he raised an eyebrow.

‘The name is not to your liking?’

‘It’s just it sounds so very foreign,’ she said. ‘Is that your Christian name or – ’

He shook his head. ‘I have no Christian name, as such. You would find my other name quite unpronounceable and considerably more foreign,’ he said with a spark of humour. ‘Grayson is my mother’s maiden name. Would it be acceptable to you to use Grayson as a ‘Christian’ name and reserve Spock as my surname? I will need both, I assume, if we are to register at a boarding house.’

‘Well, if you don’t mind,’ Elsie said a little uncomfortably.

‘I do not mind,’ Spock said. He sat back down on the seat, and leaned forward a little. ‘I can tell you very little about my future. I may tell you a little more about the circumstances by which I arrived here. But I do know now that it is imperative that I either destroy the device I am carrying, or return it to my own time – to my own people.’

He did not mention that as well as destroying the device he would be duty bound to destroy himself. He didn’t think that she would be accepting of that fact.

‘Well, we’ll do all we can to get you back,’ Elsie nodded staunchly.

‘I am grateful,’ Spock said. There was a loose chance that perhaps with time and access to the right equipment he might be able to work out some way of contacting his people. He would give himself enough time to try that, as long as he could keep himself and Elsie hidden from the Ney’roni’i who were trying to find him.

The train gave a sudden lurch as the wheels began to turn again and the walls and wires and buildings outside began to slide past the windows.

‘We’ll be in in a minute,’ Elsie said. ‘We’ll get something to eat and get down to the boarding house I have in mind, and then you can get working.’

Spock nodded silently. It would be a relief to be doing something constructive to aid his situation. It would be good, at least, to know whether he had any chance of escape.

The buildings began to fall back and platforms rose up from the ground, the grey expanses punctuated by signs, benches, and rubbish containers. An arc of metal and glass rose over the station and smoke billowed beneath. With a squealing and slow screeching the train drew in alongside the platform, hissed, and then lay still.

Spock moved to the door and puzzled how to open it. There was no handle on the inside, and he wondered if one had to wait until an attendant came to open it. After a moment Elsie nudged him aside, pushed down the window, and reached out to the ovoid handle and opened the door.

‘Quite fascinating,’ Spock said.

‘Watch out with that stick and the gap,’ she warned him, taking the cases as he handed them down.

The platform had become a busy, noisy place as the train disgorged its passengers and porters hurried forward to help with cases and trunks. Spock manoeuvred himself awkwardly down the small step onto the platform and then stood, looking about himself. This place reminded him of some of the shuttle hubs he encountered in his normal life, but the trappings were very different. The scent of smoke and other contaminants filled the air. Scraps of paper drifted over the ground in the light wind. The clothing of the hurrying passengers was largely dark and far more formal than what he was used to. People, it seemed, were universal, but the shells they chose to live in were not.

‘We’d best get on,’ Elsie said, and Spock nodded. Even with his period clothing and hairstyle he was not entirely confident spending too much time in public.

They found breakfast in what seemed to be an extended hours café close to the station exit, presumably in business to serve passengers who arrived at odd times of the day. Spock felt the smallest amount of nausea at the bacon, sausages, and other animal products being fried and served in the place, but he satisfied himself with black coffee and toast, which he declined to butter.

‘I don’t reckon the boarding house will be taking folks before ten or eleven,’ Elsie told him, ‘So we have some time to kill. There’s a park not far away from here. Let’s go there and sit and you can tell me more about what you remembered, if you want to.’

‘I will certainly tell you what I can,’ Spock nodded.

******

The bench they sat on was atop a low hill, surrounded by grass and in an area almost deserted at that time in the morning. Spock was reassured that no one could overhear because there was nowhere for anyone to be concealed.

‘The time I am from is very complex compared to yours,’ he told Elsie. ‘It is some period in the future. I cannot be more precise because to tell you of the future of your world would be against all current guidance concerning time travel. I must do my best not to impact upon your world for fear of changing the world that I know.’

‘But – you’re from another world, aren’t you?’ Elsie asked, still looking as if she did not want to believe in that fact.

Spock inclined his head to the side. ‘My father is from another world,’ he said. ‘My mother is from yours.’

Elsie’s eyes widened. ‘Then you’re – ’

‘I am half human,’ he said. ‘My father’s people made contact with your own relatively early in your world’s history in space. I was the first child born to a mixed species couple. My father’s genetics are those which dominate, which is why I have inherited more of his characteristics than those of my mother.’

Elsie shook her head slowly, as if she were trying to digest the concept of a man born of two different worlds.

‘I’ll never live to see things like that,’ she murmured.

Spock didn’t tell her that she was right. She would probably live to see man, and woman, enter space, but not to see any kind of first contact.

‘My personal history is largely irrelevant,’ he told her. ‘I was on a mission to retrieve the item I have in my suitcase. It is a device that was stolen by a culture of people who make a habit of advancing themselves with the fruits of others’ labour. With it in their possession they are able to travel through time and may cause untold damage to history. It was incumbent on the rest of my party to destroy the portal which these people have created, but I must surmise that they failed in that aim, at least before some of the people had followed me through. Perhaps now it is destroyed and we are all trapped in this place…’

Elsie was silent at that. Perhaps the enormity of the issue was too much for her to comprehend, Spock thought.

‘It’s very sad,’ she said after a moment, her eyes looking distant.

‘It is unfortunate,’ Spock said. ‘I had not envisioned this to be my future.’

‘Your past is your future,’ Elsie said rather quietly, with a small smile.

‘Yes,’ Spock said. He still did not want to tell her that he could have no future in this time. ‘I will endeavour to do all I can to return to my future. I suppose it is also incumbent on me to locate and return those who followed me.’

‘But we’ve just spent all night running from them!’ Elsie protested.

She gave a quick look around as if checking to see that those odd people hadn’t materialised in the park they were in and were closing in on them now. The place was still almost empty. A man with a dog was walking along one of the lower paths, and in the distance she could hear wailing coming from a large black perambulator pushed by a tired looking woman. Pigeons occasionally flew down to peck at the thin grass and a few rooks were fluttering in and out of their rookeries, but there were none of _those_ people, the strange ones.

Spock nodded. ‘We were trying to escape them, and now we have the advantage. But they will try to find me and retrieve the device that I took.’ He turned to look into her eyes, fixing her with his seriousness. ‘Elsie, now you have seen me safely to this place, you should return home. It is important that you are not harmed in any way. You must return to Jim.’

There was another thing he would not reveal to Elsie. She need not know that she was the ancestor of his closest friend. She simply needed to be kept safe.

‘I can’t leave you here,’ she said firmly. ‘You don’t know anything about this time. You’re like a fish out of water.’

‘That is not entirely true,’ Spock quibbled.

‘Pretty much so,’ she argued. ‘You need me to look after you, and I will. Don’t worry. I can look after myself.’

Spock looked sideways at her. She was small and delicate and pretty, but she was also determined. He had seen that determination a thousand times in Jim’s face, and knew that there was very little use in arguing. If it were Jim he would perhaps utilise a neck pinch and a request to beam the captain back to the ship. Here, he had no such option.

He sighed minutely. Human stubbornness was one thing that logic could almost never overcome.

‘Shall we go to the boarding house you recommend?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps they will be open.’

Elsie turned her wrist to check the time, and nodded. ‘It might be that they are,’ she said. ‘It’s my cousin Betty who runs the place. I wouldn’t want to bother her too early on, but she’ll let us in a bit early.’

As they stood and left the park Spock wondered about the people in dark clothes that he saw standing beneath the trees close to the gate. They looked a lot like the people he had seen at the station and on the streets. But was there something different about them, something guarded? Were they what they seemed?

  
  



	10. Chapter 10

In the close surroundings of his boarding house room, Grayson sat with the Ney’roni’i device on a small table, trying to understand its workings. He was working with tools borrowed from Betty’s husband, but they were crude for the job he was attempting and Elsie could see frustration in the set of his shoulders and the back of his neck. It must be like trying to fix a broken watch with farming tools, she thought. His head was bowed, his dark hair smoothly reflecting an arc of light. She wondered how anyone’s hair could be so smooth and so faultless. But he was a man from another place. Perhaps all of his people were like that. Perhaps they were a race of people with perfectly controllable hair.

She leant back against the wall, fascinated by the intensity of his concentration. It was as if she weren’t there at all. His lips were a thin line, his head bent close to the device as he tried to see its intricacies in the light from the window. He had removed his tie and opened up the collar of his shirt. His sleeves were rolled back above his elbows, showing olive-tinged forearms and a faint veil of dark hairs over his skin. His long-fingered hands held the tools with perfect precision. If it weren’t for the thought of Jim, always in the back of her mind...

She turned quickly to gaze out of the window, careful not to obscure the light. She had assured Betty that there was nothing queer going on between her and this strange man, and there wouldn’t be. She loved Jim. Grayson was attractive, but he was not Jim. She was allowed to look at other men, just like Jim looked at pin-ups and women on the crude posters outside the cinema. It wasn’t the same thing as betraying a long-held love. Grayson would probably be furiously annoying in a relationship. She reassured herself with that.

She focussed on the world outside the window. In the distance she could see the little coppered domes of what she knew to be a synagogue, rising like green fruits above the roofs of the houses. There was the steeple of a church not far behind, and beyond that the grey roofs of the university slanting at odd angles above a façade of red brick interleaved with cream. So many different things going on in such a small space. It was so different to the open fields around her farm, with the village almost hidden from view down in the dale. The air was almost choking with smoke here, the blue of the sky turned into a dirtier colour than the skies at home. It was a strange place to want to live.

She turned back into the room suddenly, an idea sparking in her mind.

‘Grayson,’ she said.

‘Hmm,’ he replied, not raising his head. He had succeeded in getting the cowling off the small device, but he was poking ineffectually at the workings beneath, the line of his lips getting tighter and tighter.

‘Grayson,’ she repeated, certain he was not really listening.

His eyebrow rose minutely, and he huffed out air slowly between his lips.

‘I am capable of listening while attending to another task,’ he said.

She smiled. No matter how level his voice was, the signs of annoyance were still clear to her.

‘Grayson, the university’s just over there,’ she said, nodding towards the window.

‘Indeed,’ he said, without much interest.

‘The _university_ ,’ she repeated. ‘It’s a science place mostly, as far as I know. It must be full of tools and equipment.’

At that his head lifted and he turned piercing eyes on her.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, looking past her to the roofs outside the window. ‘Electricity is already well established. Atomic physics. Radiation. Einstein’s theories of relativity. It has been said that this decade was the most important in terms of the growth of physics on this planet.’

‘They must have tools,’ Elsie repeated, and he nodded.

‘Yes, indeed they must,’ he said, laying down his own crude tools and going over to the window. ‘Is that the building? The red-brick construction with the grey roof?’

‘That’s it,’ she nodded. ‘Maybe we could go over there and ask – ’

‘Unlikely that they would admit me entrance,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I have no credentials, and no means of creating any. But perhaps I could get into the building at night. Security is probably far more lax than in a modern institution. I mean, an institution from my time period,’ he corrected himself at Elsie’s sideways glance. ‘It may indeed be possible to access tools and an energy source that this boarding house simply cannot provide.’

He turned back to the table and sat down, but there was new energy in the way he turned himself to the alien device.

‘I should investigate as much as I can of this device right now,’ he said, picking up his tools again. ‘In that way I will be better prepared for what I may be able to achieve tonight. I have a hope – ’

He trailed off and Elsie looked at him, impatiently interested.

‘You have a hope?’ she prompted him.

He picked up a small screwdriver and pointed the tip at a convoluted area of the device he was working on.

‘These circuits, here,’ he said. ‘They have certain similarities to the relays in the communicators on my ship. I have a hope that by combining the time-altering properties of the device and the communications relays, together with suitable equipment in the university lab, I may be able to convert this device to some kind of communicator.’

‘And tell your people where you are?’ Elsie asked, hope lighting inside her.

‘Possibly,’ he nodded, intent on the tiny circuits before him. ‘I need some kind of magnification device, more precise tools, a proper electrical supply, some kind of microphone and speaker. The university may be able to supply all of that.’

******

Spock stood in the shadows of an ornamental bush very close to the walls of the university. The place was perfectly dark. The scent of leaves and earth rose around him, but the air was quite chill and he could feel the hair standing up on his arms and chest. He had elected to attempt his break-in at the unsocial hour of 3 a.m., hoping that even the most dedicated and distractable scientist would have gone home by then.

The university itself was utterly quiet, but there was still movement in the city. Some distance away he could hear a steam engine building up speed. There was the occasional automobile in the streets, and sometimes the startling sound of a horse’s hooves, or a whinny or snort. There were always a few people about in the city, it seemed, even at this hour. Elsie had explained the need for milk trains and horse-drawn deliveries before dawn, among other things. Bakers were at work, and before long the fruit and flower market would come to life a few streets away. But here, at the university, the world slept.

He stepped up to the side door he had chosen with a few carefully picked tools in his hand. He had spent the evening practising at picking the lock of his door at the boarding house, much to Elsie’s amusement. After some time he had managed to achieve a consistent ability to unlock _that_ door, at least.

This lock was different, but not too different. He pushed his carefully kinked piece of metal into the keyhole, bent his ear close to the lock, and closed his eyes. He needed to do this by hearing and touch. It took longer than his best times in the boarding house but finally the lock clicked, he turned the handle, and the door swung silently inwards.

He knew roughly where to go. He had walked around the outside of the building that afternoon, and Elsie had put a few innocent and very feminine questions to students who were coming and going to glean an idea of where things were inside. He was in the right area of the building and the lab he most probably needed was on the second floor – or the first floor, in this country’s reckoning.

He had managed to buy a very antiquated looking flashlight that afternoon. It was very modern according to Elsie, but to Spock it looked as it would be more useful as a cosh than a light. He could not afford to injure anyone he encountered, though. If he was discovered, he would have to rely on the relatively predictable effects of the nerve pinch, and on the speed of his two legs. At any rate, the light came in useful enough as he moved through the dark corridor in search of the stairs. He turned it on only briefly and then navigated by memory until he needed it again. In this way he found the stairs, the upper corridors, and finally the lab that he needed – locked like the door downstairs, but luckily no more difficult to pick than his boarding room door.

Working by flashlight was frustrating, but the only option. He found a workbench with a suitable electrical outlet. He commandeered a telephone from an adjoining office and various other parts, wires, and tools from the drawers and cupboards of a storeroom at the back of the lab. Then he sat down to work on the device.

He became lost in the project, almost forgetting where he was. The tiny circuits were so alien to work with that all of his concentration was focussed on the small pool of light thrown by the flashlight and the strange convolutions and connections with which he was working. It wasn’t until he noticed that the pool of light seemed to be becoming dimmer in the face of a greater light that he realised dawn was breaking outside. As it was summer it was still very early – far too early, he hoped, for anyone to be using the building – but slowly it grew light enough for him to turn off the flashlight and use the sunlight from outside. He simply had to rely on not being discovered. He was so very close to making a meaningful connection.

As the sun rose into the sky as a burning, liquid ball he soldered the last wire between the device and the cannibalised telephone, attached the device to power, and attempted to tune it to a useful frequency. There was little noise produced by the thing but a low hum. Perhaps soon there would be janitors or other staff in the building, but he had to hope they would not come in here. He sat delicately adjusting the frequency, watching as a small vortex seemed to set up just above the alien device. Through that, he hoped, his signal would be passed. There was no hope of moving himself through the vortex and coming out alive. That would require resources that did not exist in this time frame. But the signal – perhaps the signal would pass through...

He lifted the earpiece of the antiquated phone and put it to his ear. He lifted the mouthpiece to his lips and said in a quiet, clear voice, ‘Spock to _Enterprise_. Come in _Enterprise.’_

He waited. A dull hum emitted from the earpiece, but nothing more. He adjusted the frequency again and spoke into the receiver again. Then, after what seemed like far too long, a crackling voice replied, ‘This is the _Enterprise._ We are receiving you, Mr Spock.’ Then, after a moment of silence, ‘Where _are_ you, Mr Spock?’

Palpable relaxation moved through his shoulders and spine. He had thought he would never hear the voice of Lieutenant Uhura again. Crisply and precisely he relayed his location and the date in which he had found himself.

‘I am not alone,’ he said clearly. ‘Repeat. I am not alone. A number of Ney’roni’i followed me to this time. They are hunting me. I am not alone.’

‘Acknowledged,’ came Uhura’s voice, sounding very far away indeed.

‘Lieutenant, is the captain – ’ Spock began, but the signal began to crackle and break up. He still did not know if the team had escaped Ney’ron after he had gone through the portal. ‘Lieutenant,’ he repeated, adjusting the signal again. ‘Lieutenant?’

‘...Spock … can you boost your … ’

Her voice was distorting badly. There was a small wisp of smoke rising from one of the connections and he was afraid that if he continued to put power through the thing it would burn out entirely.

‘I must cut communication,’ he said clearly. ‘Acknowledge.’

‘Acknowledged,’ Uhura’s voice replied through the growing distortion. And then she said, ‘...captain says … will find you, Spock … track you by … time.’

The smoke curling from the connection suddenly increased. Spock cut the power and sat there in the sudden silence, taking in deep breaths. The air in the lab smelt of burnt solder. But the device was still intact, for now. It was possible he would be able to use it again. And the captain had told Uhura something. Of course there was the possibility of an acting captain, but her tone had spoke of Kirk. Something very human in Spock told him that Jim was safe and well, and would be moving time itself to try to find him.

  
  



	11. Chapter 11

‘Well, now isn’t this fascinating?’

Spock hadn’t even noticed the lab door opening, but now he spun to see a middle-aged man standing there, a pipe held in one hand and a jacket slung over the other arm, just looking at him. Instinctively Spock picked up his discarded hat and covered his ears with it, but the man had already seen him, although he didn’t seem to react to Spock’s appearance. A strangeness in anatomy was probably nothing to the fact that he had been caught breaking and entering a university facility, and apparently stealing its tools and resources.

Spock stood very calmly, saying, ‘I beg your pardon. I was in great need of this equipment.’

The man’s eyes moved between Spock and the odd assortment of things on the table. Spock picked up the Ney’roni’i device and carefully put it back into the bag in which he had brought it here. Wires still trailed from it to the telephone and power supply, but at least the garishly alien device was hidden. He began to carefully disconnect the wires as the man moved closer.

‘Who are you, and what are you doing here?’ the man asked.

Spock slung the bag onto his shoulder and adjusted his weight between his feet, aware of the pain that still hampered his gait due to his injured ankle.

‘I intended no harm,’ he said calmly. ‘It was very necessary that I use this equipment.’

‘You’re a spy, aren’t you?’ the man said. ‘Did Arkwright send you? Spying on my research, huh? Come to copy my workings?’

Spock edged a little closer towards the door of the room. The man cracked his knuckles. He looked by no means strong, but very determined.

‘Don’t you try to run. I’ve already called the police,’ the man said.

Spock ran. Out through the door and down the stairs, pain shooting through his leg as he pounded through the corridors and towards the door he had let himself in by. He could hear the man racing after him but he didn’t look back. He opened the door and slammed it behind himself. As he ran down the narrow walkway alongside the building he caught a glimpse suddenly of Elsie standing there in the bushes, her mouth open and her eyes wide. He thrust the bag at her, snapping, ‘Keep it safe, hide!’ and ran on as she melted back into the ornamental planting. He could not risk that very alien device being found and investigated by people of this time – least not by people at the university, who may actually have enough understanding about it to see how very alien it was.

He pounded around the corner of the building, hearing shouting from behind and then a whistle from somewhere in front of him. Then a stentorian voice shouted out, ‘Police! Stop!’

He jerked his head around to see a number of men in uniform pounding towards him, some kind of batons in their hands. Were the police of this era armed? He didn’t know, but he couldn’t risk it. If he were shot and he was examined by a doctor then the consequences would be dire. He slewed to a halt and his ankle suddenly gave beneath him. He sank to the ground, hissing in breath between his teeth, pressing his hands around his ankle and hoping that he had not snapped a ligament. He had to avoid medical examination at all costs.

‘All right, come on, on your feet,’ one of the policeman said, walking towards him.

Spock glanced up. It was clear that the man was armed only with a baton at this moment, but he still didn’t know if there might be a firearm concealed under his jacket. He stood up, clamping down on the hot pain in his ankle and raising his hands slightly away from his sides.

‘I am not going to resist arrest,’ he said in a calm voice.

‘All right, Jones,’ the policeman nodded to his colleague, who came forward in silence to pull Spock’s arms behind his back and cuff his wrists together. Spock stood quietly, unresisting as the officer nudged him forward, and he began to walk, trying to conceal the pain in his ankle.

******

The police station seemed a primitive place, to say the least. For now Spock found himself shut into a small cell, a high, narrow room with utilitarian tiles half way up the walls and then painted white to the ceiling. The door was metal and locked tight. The facilities comprised a bucket on the floor. The window was above his reach unless he stood on the bed, which was little more than a platform at the side of the room, but there was little to see through it and it seemed more sensible to recline and rest his throbbing ankle. He sat with his back against the wall and his ankle elevated as best he could on a rolled blanket, waiting for something to happen. At least the cuffs had been removed as soon as he had submitted to a search and been confined to this cell. On the other hand his tie, braces, and shoelaces had also been removed; but at least they had allowed him to retain the bandage he had on his ankle.

He closed his eyes and sighed. At least he had managed to contact the ship. They were aware of where he was. He had a chance now of being located, of returning the stolen device to its proper owners, of securing the Ney’ron people who had infiltrated this time period. Since time was flexible as far as his would-be rescuers were concerned, they could appear at any time. His immediate problem was to conceal his identity from the law enforcement of this time. He had no papers, and had given no address, and he had no idea what might happen if he were convicted of breaking and entering, or of stealing or vandalism. It was a given that with the resources of the _Enterprise_ he could be removed from any institution of this era, but that would only happen if the captain brought the ship to this time.

He heard footsteps outside, then the metallic clunk of the door being unlocked and a bolt being drawn back. A policeman appeared in the doorway.

‘Come on, sunshine. Out,’ he said, jerking his thumb at the corridor outside.

Spock got to his feet with care, resisting asking why the man thought he might respond to the moniker _sunshine._ It was a term McCoy had used on him occasionally, and questioning its use had never gone well.

The policeman took him silently through to another room, where Spock was invited to sit on one side of a small table. Opposite sat a man who seemed to be of higher rank than those who had so far dealt with him. He was scrutinising a piece of paper in front of him.

‘Grayson Spock,’ he said, tapping a pen on the paper. Finally he looked up. ‘I’m Inspector Rawlins.’

Spock inclined his head gravely.

‘And you have no fixed abode,’ the man continued. ‘No place of work. No relatives to vouch for you. You’ve been in this city for – what, a day?’

‘For approximately twenty three point seven two hours,’ Spock nodded. The man glanced up at him again, a look of muted surprise on his face.

‘So, you were caught in the university, having broken into one of the labs and stolen some equipment?’ the officer asked.

Spock shook his head. ‘I admit that I gained entry to the university, but I did not remove anything from the premises that I did not bring in myself,’ he said honestly.

‘You left with a bag in your possession. It wasn’t on your person when you were arrested.’

‘That is true,’ Spock said. ‘However, it only contained that which already belonged to me.’

‘Then why did you throw it away. What was in it, and where did you throw it?’

‘I threw it into the bushes,’ Spock said truthfully enough. He didn’t need to mention that Elsie had been there to catch it. ‘It contained a communications device,’ he said, since that was the function the device had been performing most recently. ‘My reasons for discarding it are my own.’

The man sighed and scratched his head.

‘You’re an odd looking chap, aren’t you?’

Spock lifted an eyebrow. ‘My mother had no complaints,’ he said.

‘What were you doing in the university?’ the officer asked, passing over what some might have regarded as cheek.

‘I required access to the equipment and facilities in the lab,’ Spock said honestly. ‘I didn’t believe I could have gained that access by asking. As you say, I have no fixed abode and no one to vouch for me. In those circumstances, the only option I had was to force entry.’

He had declined to mention the boarding house that he was registered at, or his connection with Elsie Kirk. It seemed best to protect Elsie and her relatives as far as possible from any investigation from the authorities of this time.

‘The only option,’ Rawlins murmured, jabbing at the paper in front of him with the tip of his fountain pen. Spock watched, wondering how long the nib would survive under such abuse.

‘Professor Alcock from the university thinks you were sent by a rival to spy on his developments in nuclear theory,’ Rawlins said.

‘I was not,’ Spock replied.

‘Then what _were_ you doing?’ the officer asked, impatience breaking into his voice.

Spock closed his eyes briefly, then regarded the man and said as honestly as possible, ‘I am a long way from home and I urgently needed to contact my people. I believed I could only do that with the equipment at the university.’

‘Why didn’t you just use the damned telephone service?’ Rawlins asked him, starting to sound exasperated. For a moment he reminded Spock strongly of Dr McCoy. ‘Or send a telegram?’

‘My people are not connected to the telephone service,’ Spock said, honestly enough.

‘You’re American, aren’t you?’ Rawlins asked, leaning back to consider him.

Spock inclined his head. It was half a truth, at any rate. He had been born to an American mother, and his accent was certainly influenced by hers.

‘But you don’t have a passport or any papers? You don’t have any record of your entry to this country?’

‘I do not,’ Spock said.

‘So you are, in effect, an illegal alien?’

Spock’s eyebrow quirked upward at that. Had he been human, he would have laughed.

‘Yes, I imagine I am,’ he nodded.

Rawlins sighed. ‘You’re obviously an intelligent man, Mr Spock. You know how this is going to go. You refuse to give us any more details than your name and age. You refuse to tell us exactly why you broke into the university. You refuse to go into detail about the bag you discarded, and why you discarded it. It’s possible we could clear this all up, if you’re honest with us. But otherwise it’s going to mean prison, and you won’t enjoy that, believe me.’

Spock blinked. He could not be more honest than he was being. It could be that he would have no choice but to be tried and sentenced. As long as he could avoid more than the most cursory medical examination, he might be safe. But the idea of being incarcerated in this time did not appeal. He couldn’t imagine that he would serve a sentence of whatever length without at some point having the truth of his identity revealed.

He leant forward across the table, resting his arms on the flat surface.

‘I assure you, Inspector, I meant no harm when I entered the university. I did not intend to remove anything from the building. It was very necessary that I contact my people, and this was the only way I could conceive of doing so.’

‘Who _are_ your people, Mr Spock?’ the Inspector asked quietly, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. ‘You keep talking about your people. Who are they, and why do you need to contact them in this way? Why not just send them a letter if they don’t have telephones?’

Spock regarded him for a long moment, wondering how honest he could be with this man. He seemed intelligent and rational, but that didn’t mean it was safe to reveal more than he already had. Even with the evidence of his differing anatomy it had taken some persuasion for Elsie and Jim to believe his story, but at least when they had their thoughts hadn’t turned to study or vivisection. If he revealed it to this man, in custody and without the chance to run if necessary, he could be leading himself into extreme danger.

‘I cannot tell you any more, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I am sorry.’

The inspector sighed and rubbed a hand over his forehead.

‘I’d like to help you, Mr Spock. You seem like a decent chap. But I can’t if you don’t give me more to go on. All I have at the moment is a vagrant who has broken into a very important building and who refuses to help himself by being honest. What can I do?’

Spock shook his head.

‘There is little that you can do,’ he said. ‘I do appreciate your intent – but I cannot say more.’

The inspector sighed again, pushing his chair back from the table and gathering his papers together as he stood up.

‘The sergeant tells me you injured your ankle when you were running,’ he said. ‘Would you like us to take a look?’

Spock shook his head. He already had the bandage around the injured ankle, and he had taken the liberty of unwinding and reapplying it when he was in the police cell.

‘I don’t need medical attention,’ he said.

‘Well – do you need breakfast?’ the inspector asked as if he wanted to do _something_ for his hapless prisoner _._ ‘I’d say it’s a given you missed it this morning?’

Spock’s eyebrow lifted. ‘That is indeed a given,’ he said. ‘Are you able to cater for vegans?’

‘Is that a religion?’ the inspector asked blankly.

Spock shook his head, opting for the more simple, ‘I am a vegetarian. I don’t eat animal products.’

‘I’ll have them send something in,’ the inspector told him. ‘Let’s get you back to your lodgings.’

Spock stood, the inspector’s hand on his arm. For a moment he harboured a most illogical hope that the man was returning him to the boarding house – but of course he didn’t know about the boarding house, and was merely referring to the cell in a jocular manner. Spock walked carefully, unable to conceal his limp, the inspector’s hand tight under his elbow to give him support. In another time, perhaps he could have cultivated a friendship with this man.


	12. Chapter 12

Elsie stood in her room in the boarding house, looking out into the street below. She was worried about Grayson – desperately worried. But what could she do? It was obvious that he hadn’t wanted her to be associated with him. He had told her to hide. But she couldn’t think of a place to hide. This city was full of people. There were eyes everywhere. She didn’t know who she was hiding from. She wondered if there were some way of going down to the police station and explaining or spinning some tale that would make them release him, but she didn’t want to risk leaving that strange device anywhere. Neither did she want to risk walking into the police station with it where anyone might take it from her.

But what might happen to him in that police station? The first time they had a doctor look at him something would be noticed. He wasn’t normal. He wasn’t like other people. His temperature was different, his face was different, he barely had a discernible pulse. When he exerted himself you could see that he flushed in a distinctly greener tone than any normal person should. How long would it be before someone discovered that he wasn’t like everyone else here? And then what? More doctors? Questioning that she knew he would resist? X-rays, maybe? She didn’t know if his bones were different to hers, but why wouldn’t they be? Perhaps they would even cut into him to find out the truth.

She made up her mind very quickly. If there was anything she could do she would have to get him out of there, no matter what he had said to protect her.

She took that strange alien device out of the bag that Grayson had thrust into her hands and wrapped it in a cloth from the side table by her bed. Then she emptied out her handbag and pushed and wiggled the object inside. There wasn’t much room for anything else, but she could get her purse and her compact to sit on top, and the bag didn’t look too bulging. At least it was a good size, not like those silly, beautiful, beaded things the posh girls carried.

That done, she walked quickly out of the boarding house and made for the nearest police station, hoping that was where Grayson would be. She didn’t know exactly what she could do, but perhaps she could plead for him. Perhaps she could explain him away as being not right in the head. Perhaps she could even muster some kind of bail and get him out. She would lose the money, but at least he would be safe.

What would he say when he discovered she had ignored his instruction to hide and had come out after him? She folded her arms across her chest, hugging her bag to her. Maybe she didn’t care. He was more important than a lump of – whatever that thing was made of. Surely a living person was more important than that?

It was busy in the streets by now, but it wasn’t long before she became aware that not everyone walking with and by her were ordinary men and women. There were some – maybe four or five – who seemed to be stepping wherever she stepped. She took a turning down a side street, and they turned too. She quickened her pace, and they quickened too.

She could feel the thickness of dread welling up in her throat. Grayson had been right. She should have stayed hidden. She should have put that thing somewhere that no one could find it. But – suppose they were tracking her _because_ of that thing? If she had left it alone and gone out to find Grayson perhaps they would have found it anyway.

Her back prickled. She didn’t dare look around but she could hear their footsteps quickening as she sped up. She was in an almost empty back street and she wondered how long it would be before they accosted her. At the other end there was another crowd of people milling past, but here there was no one.

Except – a door opened and a man stepped out, a cigarette hanging from his lips as he emptied a rubbish bin into a larger one outside. She quickened her pace again, making for that open door and the protection of the man beside it. From behind her one of those people following called out, ‘Hey!’ but she took another step forward –

– except her foot never touched the ground. Something seemed to freeze her, hold her. It was like a million points of light touching every part of her body, reaching inside her. A strange feeling of lightness that lightened even further until she couldn’t hear, she couldn’t see, she couldn’t breathe –

– and then she was stepping forward again, gasping in air in a place that was bright with lights and colour. The light was gone from her body and the floor wasn’t where she had expected it, and she almost fell.

She looked up to see men in red shirts pointing something at her that looked like some kind of guns. She stared, fear running through her. But she recognised those clothes somehow. Thank God. They were a different colour, but they were just like the shirt Grayson had been wearing when she first saw him. They had the same shaped badge on the breast. They were _his_ people. They were his people, thank God.

‘Hands away from your body. Step down from the pad,’ one of the men barked. She looked around, bewildered, to see that the group who had been following her – five of them – were standing around her, looking far less shaken by what had happened. She stumbled forward, holding her hands up instinctively, terrified of being killed in some terrible mistake.

‘Please,’ she said, looking to the man who had spoken. ‘I’m not one of them. I was helping Grayson. Grayson Spock.’

Someone pushed through the other men then, a young man, blond, gold-shirted and eager.

‘Spock? You know where Spock is?’

He put his hand on her arm and hustled her away from the others, taking her to the side of the room. Out of the side of her vision she could see the other dark-suited men and women being patted down by the red-shirted guards.

‘Take them to the brig,’ the gold-shirted man said quickly, then turned back to Elsie, looking at her with an intense gaze.

Despite her worry and distraction Elsie could see that he was handsome, hazel-eyed and with dark blond hair that waved with the same slight unruliness that beset her Jim whenever he tried to look neat.

‘Our scanners say you’re quite human, ma’am, so I’m inclined to believe what you say,’ the man said. ‘You say you were with Spock?’

She nodded, still looking around the small grey-walled room. She had never seen a place like this before.

‘We found him at first,’ she said. ‘I mean, not long after he – jumped, or whatever happened. Not long after he came to our time.’

‘Then you know what he is?’ the man asked, with some reluctance in his voice. ‘He’s confided in you?’

She nodded again. ‘He told me as much as he thought safe,’ she said.

Suddenly she remembered her bag and she opened the clasp and rummaged for that alien device beneath her purse and compact.

‘Here,’ she said, unwrapping the lace-edged cloth and handing the device it to the man. ‘This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? He wanted me to keep it safe.’

The man exhaled as if a great relief had come over him, turning the object over in his hands.

‘That’s what it’s all about,’ he nodded. ‘But what about Spock? Where is he?’

‘He was arrested by the police,’ she said urgently, twisting her hands together. ‘I was going to see if I could help him, when you – well – ’ She looked helplessly around the room. There was no door near where she had found herself. ‘When you did whatever it is you did.’

‘That’s called a transporter,’ the man said, smiling at her kindly. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been terribly rude, haven’t I?’ he asked. ‘I’m Jim. Jim Kirk.’

He was holding out his hand, but Elsie didn’t take it. She was too busy staring. After a moment she caught herself and reached out to shake his hand, laughing brightly.

‘I’m sorry, I’m being rude too,’ she confessed. ‘You wouldn’t believe the coincidence. That’s my husband’s name. I’m Elsie – Elsie Kirk.’

He gave a slight double-take, but then smiled broadly. ‘Well, that is a coincidence,’ he said, with a rather strange tone in his voice. ‘Where would we be without coincidences? Elsie, if I take you somewhere and show you a map would you be able to show me where Spock is being held? That device you were carrying was easy to single out – that’s how we managed to beam you and the – others – up just now. But searching for Spock could take days if we’re doing it on body readings alone – unless you can pinpoint a location.’

‘I can do that,’ Elsie said confidently. Part of her wanted to stagger and stare at what was around her, but it was more important the Grayson was rescued. She hated to think of what might be happening to him in the police station.

******

In the police station Spock was, he had to admit, bored. There was only so much fascination one could extract from the small and barren surroundings of his cell. He had been given a meal, which was bland but palatable, and at least had no meat making up the ingredients. He was starting to wonder how long he could resist using the bucket on the floor that was evidently meant as a toilet. Sitting in the same room as his own effluent had never appealed to him. Sitting in this room at all did not appeal to him, but he couldn’t do anything about that for now. His intention was to investigate the door more thoroughly to see if escape were possible, but that was best left until nightfall, when the place would be quieter, he hoped.

He sat with his foot elevated and his fingers in a meditative position, ruminating on his position. It really was untenable. There was very little chance that, should he find himself in a prison of this period, he would be allowed to serve out his sentence without someone discovering what he was. Even if he kept as low a profile as possible it was likely that some event would occur to reveal his secret. He had learnt from long experience that being different attracted bullies, especially among such emotional beings as humans.

He closed his eyes, deciding to use the undisturbed time to meditate properly, to reconcile himself to his difficult position trapped in the past of a planet that was barely his. He had done everything that he could. He had, against all odds, managed to contact the ship. Patience would have to be his greatest virtue.

But before he could sink into a proper meditative state he heard a key turning and bolts being drawn back. He opened his eyes, letting the light flood back, and saw the door opening to admit Inspector Rawlins, with a couple of lower ranking officers behind him.

‘All right, sonny,’ the man said gruffly, and Spock lifted an eyebrow at the mode of address. The Inspector jerked his thumb back at the corridor outside and said, ‘On your feet. I’m afraid you’re being passed on to higher authorities.’

Spock stood, trying again not to favour his injured ankle too much, so as not to draw a doctor’s inspection.

‘Higher authorities?’ he enquired.

‘Well, I think we’re all agreed you’re an oddity,’ the man smiled. ‘There’s something not right about you, and the Super wants to have a word with you. But the Super wants you to come to him, not the other way round. He’s a very busy man.’

‘I see,’ Spock nodded.

This news caused him concern. It was likely that Elsie would know where he was in this local station, but she would have no idea of his whereabouts if he were transferred to another place, and it was not certain that the police would tell her. If this were a more important station it could be that the cells would be more secure and he would have less chance of escape. But there was little he could do about it but submit to the Inspector’s will.

‘Just hold out your hands, then, lad,’ the Inspector said, and Spock did as he was told, realising that he was about to be handcuffed again.

He was taken through the station to a door at the back, where he was helped into the back of a van and the doors locked shut. He sat in silence, waiting while the vehicle rocked as men got into the front and the engine started up with a rattling roar. The scent of fuel billowed through the air and he resigned himself to the sense of helplessness. But as he leant back against the metal wall of the vehicle he felt a familiar resonance start up through his body that was at odds of the vibration of the van’s engine. The plank seat seemed to dissolve beneath him, and for a moment he was blinking in the light of the _Enterprise_ ’s transporter room, looking up into the faces of Dr McCoy, James Kirk, and – Elsie!

  
  



	13. Chapter 13

That moment of materialisation on the _Enterprise_ only lasted for a millisecond. It lasted just long enough for Spock’s brain to take in the impression of those faces in the transporter room. Then he could feel the vibration of the van beneath him again and see the enclosed darkness of the place. For a split second the light returned again – and then gradually the hum of the beam through his body faded, and Spock was left in the van, leaning against the wall, wondering at what had gone wrong.

The beam had not sounded right. He was certain of that. Something in the subharmonic resonance had been different to usual. It was hard to diagnose a transporter problem merely from the sound and feel of the beam, but it felt like a power failure to Spock. The operator, whoever it was, had done all they could to allow him to rematerialise safely in his original location, and had then cut the power.

Spock lifted his cuffed hands, looking intently at his skin, reassuring himself that there was no cell breakdown from the distorted effects of the beam. There seemed to be no problem. He felt quite whole. But he was left with his original problem. He was in the back of a van, his hands cuffed together, being taken he knew not where to meet the ‘super,’ whomever he may be.

He turned his attention to the doors at the back of the van. They had been locked closed, and were solid apart from a window in each panel, covered with a metal grille. Perhaps the lock could be forced, though. These vans were built for human prisoners, not Vulcan. He pressed his hand against the doors, rattling them gently. It was certainly worth trying.

He pressed his face closer to the grille of the window, trying to see where he was. The van was evidently moving slowly along city streets, having to give considerable leeway to horse-drawn vehicles and pedestrians. It was too much to hope that this journey would take them out into the country, into a more deserted area. There was a horse-drawn cart full of rusting metal very close behind the van, following at a brisk walk. It didn’t look as if it would fall back any time soon.

There was nothing do be done for it. Spock put his hands against the doors, and pushed. They gave a little, but did not open. He sat himself down on the floor of the van, angled himself towards the doors, and kicked with all the power he could muster.

The van shook and the doors crashed open. Without pause Spock rolled himself out of the van onto the road. The horse following reared in shock, its hooves flailing against the sky above Spock’s head. Without waiting to assess the situation, Spock pushed himself to his feet and ran, ignoring the stinging pain through his ankle and concentrating on speed. He was still without shoelaces since they had been taken in the police cell, and his shoes were flapping off his feet. He kicked them off, feeling a moment of regret for the loss, and pounded on. If only the horse had been unharnessed he would have considered taking it, but there was nothing for it but to leave under his own power.

Behind him he could hear a clamour starting up as the officers in the van realised what had happened and the panicking horse tried to drag itself free of its cart. The sound of metal clattering onto the street gave him a moment of satisfaction. The horse had evidently overturned the cart, and the more chaos left behind him the better. Anything to distract his would-be pursuers.

He saw a side street open up to his left and ducked down it, grateful that it was a winding road that veered to the left and right between buildings. He seemed to have come into an older part of the city, with less of the open air, straight lines and breathing space of Victorian development. A small alley led off the street and he turned the corner and ran again, relying on taking enough turns to shake off his pursuers and finding somewhere to hide in this maze of a city. At least without his shoes his footfalls were quiet. Perhaps, perhaps, he would evade capture.

******

‘Scott, what happened! What’s wrong!’

Kirk was upset. There was no doubt about that. He was pressing the button on some kind of intercom on the transporter desk as if he wanted to break it. Beside him Dr McCoy was bouncing on his toes, looking as if he were about to take off.

‘It’s no use, Captain,’ a Scottish voice filtered through the intercom. ‘We were shaken up too much by the slingshot around the sun. You have to give the energy reserves time to recoup. That last time just about tied it. It’s going to take us time to fix what’s wrong and get the power back up to normal.’

‘How much time, Scotty?’ Kirk asked urgently, exchanging a glance with the doctor.

It sounded as if the man on the other end of the intercom was sucking in his breath between his teeth. ‘Och, 48 hours at the very least, captain. I cannae work miracles.’

‘All right, Scotty. Kirk out,’ Kirk said, his voice sounding very controlled.

A moment after he released the button on the intercom the captain slammed his fist down onto the desk. The whole thing shook. Elsie took a step back. He reminded her of her Jim when he was angry.

‘Now, will that help?’ she said, out of habit.

The captain looked round at her, a smile suddenly softening her face.

‘No, it won’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to do anything else for Scotty to get mad about, do I?’

‘This is a sensible girl we’ve beamed up here, Jim,’ Dr McCoy said with a smile.

Elsie looked sideways at him. He was a handsome, likeable man with his blue eyes and dark hair. There was something immediately attractive about him, and she felt safe in his presence.

‘What happened?’ she asked seriously. ‘I thought I saw him for a moment there, coming into – whatever you call it. Is he – I mean – will he – ’

Kirk looked toward the overall-clad man who had been operating the transporter. The man shook his head.

‘He materialised back all right down on Earth, sir,’ he said, in a distinctly English accent. ‘I managed to stabilise the re-formation, despite the movement of the vehicle he was in.’

‘Well, that’s one good thing,’ Kirk sighed. ‘Good work, Kyle.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ the man said smartly.

Kirk nodded distractedly, then took Elsie by the elbow and led her towards the door.

‘Come on, Bones,’ he said, beckoning the doctor with a jerk of his head. ‘We need to rethink our strategy. Spock’s down there and he’s alone, and if anyone finds out the truth about him – well – ’

He trailed off, and Elsie looked at him in alarm. What _would_ happen if anyone found out the truth? She glanced at the blue-eyed doctor.

‘What could they do to him?’ she asked.

Dr McCoy shrugged, but he looked deeply uneasy. ‘Once they figure he’s an alien, almost anything they please,’ he said darkly. ‘I don’t imagine they’d stop at vivisection. People of this time – barbaric, suspicious...’

He trailed off, as if suddenly remember that he was in the presence of one of those people.

‘We’re not _all_ like that,’ Elsie reassured him gently.

‘No, I know you’re not, ma’am,’ he said, patting her on the arm, amusing her with his gentle manner. ‘Not all of you. Just some...’

‘Then what can we do?’ Elsie asked.

Kirk shook his head and sighed. ‘Well, we can’t beam you down and we can’t beam him up. I think – ’ He glanced at the doctor, as if reticent to say his next words. ‘I think we’re going to have to take a shuttle down there – no running lights, under the cover of night. We don’t need to worry about radar tracking in this time, at least. McCoy, I want you to go up to sensor control and fine-tune for Spock’s readings. If we find him we can go down and get him and take the lady back at the same time.’

Elsie stared at him blankly.

‘What’s a shuttle?’ she asked, thinking of looms and weaving.

‘Oh!’ Kirk laughed briefly. ‘It’s a – kind of flying machine,’ he said. ‘An airplane, if you will.’

Elsie’s eyes widened. ‘I never have flown,’ she said, excitement mingling with nervousness in the pit of her stomach. ‘I never thought I would in my life.’

‘Well, you might get the chance soon,’ Kirk said.

He stopped in the corridor as a blonde woman with a rather spectacular hairstyle walked towards them. The fact that evidently women worked on this ship as well as men was startling enough, but Elsie’s eyes opened even further at the clothes she was wearing. She seemed to have forgotten to put her skirt on under her long tunic – but no one else seemed embarrassed or surprised by the extent of leg she was showing.

‘Yeoman, would you take Mrs Kirk and get her something to eat?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘Mrs – Kirk, sir?’ the woman asked, looking almost as surprised as Elsie.

Kirk laughed. ‘It’s a coincidence,’ he said. ‘Common name, I guess. Now – ’ And he lowered his voice still further, so that Elsie could barely catch what he was saying. ‘I need you to be very sensitive, Yeoman. Take her to guest quarters and sort out something for her to eat. Stay with her. She can’t see too much of the ship, access records or anything published after this time. She’s from earth of this era, and it’s important there’s no – contamination.’

‘Contamination?’ Elsie echoed, taking a step closer.

Kirk looked up as if surprised she had been able to hear. ‘I wasn’t thinking of the medical type, ma’am, although I’m sure the good doctor would say it’s best to keep you away from too much contact with modern bugs that you might have no resistance to. But it’s important that you’re not exposed to too much knowledge of the future. It could have catastrophic results on the timeline.’

Elsie nodded slowly, glancing at the blonde woman. She looked friendly, at least, even if she was only half-dressed.

‘Well, I don’t mind being cosseted for a while,’ she smiled, holding out her hand. ‘Call me Elsie.’

‘I’m Janice,’ the woman replied with a warm smile as she shook Elsie’s hand. ‘You just come with me and I’ll get you set up with whatever you want to eat.’

‘ _Whatever_ I want?’ Elsie echoed, wondering if that was actually possible on this amazing spacecraft. There was a world of flavours out there that she had no hope of replicating with the ingredients from the shops in a small Yorkshire town.

‘Pretty much,’ Janice nodded, her smile widening. ‘You just come and see.’

******

After some time of running Spock slowed to a walk. Pain was throbbing through his ankle again and while it was something he could suppress, he was mindful of Elsie’s words. The pain was telling him something, and it was senseless to injure himself further. He could no longer hear any signs of being followed. At first he had heard shouts and shrill whistles, but he had managed to move far enough and fast enough to outrun his human pursuers.

He looked about the alley he was in. He had found himself in a residential area, flanked by red-brick terraced houses with uniform back yards with high walls. The smell in this narrow street was none too savoury and there was nowhere very much to hide here. He looked more than conspicuous with no shoes and his hands cuffed together. At least he still had his hat to hide his ears, but his trousers were loose without the braces to hold them up, he had no tie, and with a certain amount of stubble beginning on his jaw he certainly must look dishevelled and disreputable.

He had to find some way of removing the handcuffs. He tried briefly at simply pulling his hands through the circles of metal, but there was no way he could do that without breaking the bones. The chain joining the two cuffs was too strong for him to pull apart, but perhaps if he could find some kind of cutters he could get through the rings. His mind worked hard over ways to do this. Holding a tool in his hands and still reaching the rings would be almost impossible. Perhaps with some kind of saw held upside down in a vice he could manage it? It would be impossible to ask anyone for help without them becoming immediately suspicious.

He walked on down the street, wondering if he would come across some kind of shed or workshop that might have tools he could use to cut the metal. A saw held in a vice might be the only way, which would mean a work-bench and mounted tools, and there didn’t seem to be any sheds large enough for that here.

A gate at the back of one of the yards opened and a small boy ran out into the alley between the houses. Spock flattened himself against the wall, hardly breathing, but the boy was focussed on a hoop that he was bowling along the brick-paved ground, and he ran past without a second glance at the tall stranger standing at the side of the alley. A shout curled after the boy from the yard behind the wall, a woman calling something in a high-pitched voice about coming back in time for tea.

Spock exhaled slowly as the boy vanished down another narrow channel between one row of terraces and the next. Then he moved on. He had to find somewhere to hide or somewhere to release himself from these cuffs. If the transporter had failed he didn’t know how long he might have to wait for help from the ship, and any time in this city would be a long time.

  
  



	14. Chapter 14

 ‘Jim, we’ve got trouble,’ McCoy said, straightening up from his scanners with a concerned look on his face.

Kirk came to his side instantly, leaning in to look at the readings, but to the non-medical eye the spikes and waves on the screen were gibberish.

‘What is it, Bones?’ he asked quickly.

‘Well, I haven’t pinpointed Spock yet – but I have got _this_ ,’ he said pointedly, touching his finger to a certain set of readings. ‘Vulcan readings are considerably more like human – especially when we’re talking Spock. But Ney’roni’i...’

‘We’ve still got Ney’roni’i people down there?’ Kirk asked, frustration rising in his chest.

‘Well, it was never certain we’d got all of them, Jim,’ McCoy reminded him. ‘Yes. There are still three down there. I don’t know if there are more.’

‘They tend to travel in even numbers,’ Kirk said, rubbing his finger across his lip. ‘If that’s all of them that would make eight in total.’ He nodded slowly. ‘All right, Bones. Keep scanning. Scan the whole damn planet if you have to – but _find Spock._ As soon as you’ve got him, pass on the job of scanning to someone else, and we’ll ready that shuttlecraft.’

‘You don’t think we should go straight down for the Ney’roni’i I’ve picked up?’ McCoy asked.

Kirk shook his head. ‘Not yet. Search close to them. They’re probably looking for Spock too, and they might have better luck since they’re in closer proximity to him.’

‘All right, Jim,’ McCoy nodded.

‘Well, I might go and see how our guest is doing,’ Kirk sighed, turning away from the console. ‘Call me if – ’

‘Jim.’

The tone in McCoy’s voice made him turn back instantly.

‘What is it, Bones?’ he asked.

‘Don’t start getting too friendly with her,’ he said pointedly.

‘I’m not going to tell her anything, Bones,’ Kirk said in dismissal. ‘I do know the Prime Directive as it relates to time travel, you know.’

‘It’s not that, Jim,’ McCoy told him. ‘It’s just – you’d be hitting on your great-great-however-many-times-great-grandma.’

Kirk reeled. ‘Just because she’s got the same surname,’ he began.

‘Oh, she’s got more than that, Jim,’ McCoy said with a smile. ‘She’s got the same DNA. You know the transporter automatically makes a record of the body make-up. Well, I took a look at it, just to see whose future we might affect by having her here. Turns out, it’s _yours.’_

Kirk whistled slowly, bringing the appearance of Elsie Kirk back into his mind and putting alongside it that blurred, age-spotted photograph that he had shown to Spock what seemed like weeks ago. It was hard to reconcile that photograph with the real, colour version of the woman that he had seen.

‘I didn’t know her name,’ he said slowly.

‘Well, maybe not,’ McCoy said, ‘but Spock certainly remembered the details you’d told him, and you know how the gateway works, don’t you? You have to concentrate on a specific time and it sends you there. God knows why he chose that time, but he did, and that’s where he ended up. So, I repeat, don’t go getting too friendly. That’s your future she’s holding – and your past, too.’

Jim blew out air between his lips, slightly staggered by the thought of the history that he had run into. How many people had the chance to meet their distant ancestors? There were so many questions he could ask her, so many things to find out. But McCoy was right. He had to act with extreme care, in case he managed to erase his own existence and affect not just his own life, but thousands of others too.

He tapped his finger distractedly on the console. ‘Find Spock, Bones,’ he said. ‘The sooner the better. We need to get Elsie back home and all contaminants out of this time, and we need to do it now.’

******

Some hours later Spock was sat in a small, unlocked shed in what appeared to be a communal area of vegetable gardens. A sign at the entrance had proclaimed it to be _East Hindley Allotments_. His hands were still cuffed before him, but he had scavenged a few vegetables from the plots around and had made himself a fresh, if earthy, meal. He sat contemplating his bound hands as he slowly took bites from a rather straggly carrot, wondering in another part of his mind what McCoy would say if he saw him. No doubt he would have some pithy reference to popular culture to pull out of his mind. But no matter. He had little choice but to steal raw food, and perhaps the absence of McCoy was a blessing.

It was early evening by now, and thankfully the plots were largely empty, although he had seen a few men and women tending their patches, perhaps taking the chance after a day of work. He would have to be very careful not to be seen, but perhaps when night fell he could move out of his shelter and try again to find somewhere with tools for him to free his hands. There must be suitable equipment somewhere in this city.

His attention sharpened as he heard a small noise outside. He moved a little closer to the door and looked out cautiously, concerned that the shed owner might be outside. There was no one in the patches nearby, though. The closest people he could see were about twenty yards away. But he had definitely heard a noise. Perhaps there was some small rodent about here. Perhaps a cat or dog in search of such rodents... He put his head out a little further. Cats would not bother him, but –

Something struck him abruptly over the back of the head and he dropped to the ground, consciousness fragmenting into a blurred half-awareness. Then he caught the sound of a some kind of pulse and a light seemed to expand inside his chest, pushing with the swiftness of pure energy up into his head and sending him into nothingness...

...

...and he woke in semi-darkness in a place that smelt of mildew and damp, the floor hard beneath him. He moved experimentally. His hands were still cuffed. His ankle was still injured, only now he had another blow to the head to add to that, and the aching of his ribs and back from lying on an uncomfortably uneven surface.

‘So, it wakes up,’ said a voice.

Spock blinked, raising his cuffed hands to wipe what seemed to be a mixture of blood and dirt from the side of his face.

‘Where is the device?’ the voice asked.

Spock blinked again, trying to see in the darkness. The Ney’roni’i, he knew, had better night vision than he did. Possibly his captor could see him perfectly well.

‘I don’t have the device,’ he said flatly.

He could only assume that the device was, along with Elsie, on the _Enterprise_. That thought was a great relief. The Ney’roni’i could do what they liked to him, but they would not re-acquire the device and they would not hurt Jim’s ancestor.

He closed his eyes and listened, trying to make out if he could hear the sounds of more than one alien in the room with him. It was very hard to tell. Although the Ney’roni’i presented as humanoid, their looks were very deceptive. They were chameleon-like, mimicking those around them, and on their home planet they had looked far less like the inhabitants of this world. Even gender was a blurred issue on Ney’ron.

‘Then _where_ is the device?’ the voice repeated, a hard edge to the words.

‘I do not know,’ he said. He could not possibly know.

Something that may have been a boot impacted against his ribs, and he grunted, automatically bringing disciplines to bear to quell the pain. Then there was the sound of feet moving away and a low conversation set up in what must be the Ney’roni’i language. Spock frowned. The internal translator embedded just behind his ear should be making sense of what they said. They must be using some kind of suppression device. He didn’t like not being able to understand. He had, at least, gleaned that there was more than one of the aliens in this room with him. He thought that he could make out three distinct voices.

The footsteps moved back, accompanied by another pair.

‘Where is the rest of our team?’ the original voice asked.

Spock shook his head. ‘I do not know,’ he said, but he could surmise a little. It was very possible, if they had fallen out of touch with their cohorts, that they had been beamed up when Elsie had been transported to the _Enterprise_. He could not think of another reason why they would have disappeared. The Ney’roni’i were certainly more than equal to early twentieth century Earth technology.

He tried again at forcing the cuffs he wore apart, but he was no more able to force the metal now, in the darkness of this room, than he had been earlier. He gave that up and tried to sit up a little, but the exhaustion of something like phaser stun was still permeating his body. For now, it seemed, he was quite helpless. He was beginning to feel that he had had as much of the twentieth century as he could stand.

******

It was a risky business taking a shuttle down into Earth’s atmosphere, even while night was cloaking it from sight. Kirk elected to fly the craft himself, with McCoy and a handful of security guards to back him up. Elsie was safely aboard the _Enterprise._ It wasn’t worth the risk of exposing her to a possible conflict between the Starfleet men and the three Ney’roni’i people that McCoy had picked up on sensors. It was impossible to land near the readings, so Kirk had left the shuttle in some kind of goods yard some distance away, covered by a large cloth and under the care of one guard, dressed as a period policeman.

The streets were empty as they moved closer to the readings, McCoy with his tricorder held open but shielded carefully under the hat that he carried.

‘You’ve got them, Bones?’ he murmured, and McCoy nodded.

‘Three Ney’roni’i, and Spock, still all in the same location,’ he said. ‘They haven’t moved for a good few hours.’

Kirk nodded briefly.

‘Come on. Let’s pick up the pace,’ he said, looking behind him at his security team which were all dressed as police officers. ‘Spock may be hurt.’

‘His readings are stable,’ McCoy told him, but all the same he sped up too. ‘Left here,’ he murmured, and they turned down a side street. ‘In here, Jim,’ he said, nodding towards stairs that were built down from the level of the road into some kind of cellar.

‘Phasers out,’ Kirk said swiftly to the security men. ‘I want you to stun on sight.’

‘Mr Spock – ’ one of the men behind began.

Kirk nodded. ‘Stun him too if needs be. It’s important that we get all of the alien hostiles. Spock understands that.’

The man nodded, and turned to his team. ‘You heard your orders, men. Fall in behind me.’

The guard stepped down to the door and pressed the nozzle of his phaser to the lock, using a quick, high-intensity beam to melt the metal to vapour. The door swung inwards, and instantly the darkness inside was lit by phaser beams lashing out across the room. There was a number of dull thuds, and Kirk shone a flashlight into the room to reveal three unconscious bodies on the floor, and Spock lying next to the farthest wall, raising an eyebrow enquiringly. He had escaped the stun beams due to being below their level.

‘Spock, it’s good to see you,’ Kirk grinned, elation pushing through his body.

‘Likewise,’ Spock said smoothly, shuffling himself up to a sitting position. He held out his hands and the captain saw that they were cuffed with antiquated metal handcuffs. ‘Captain, could you?’

‘Spock, aren’t you even going to say thank you?’ McCoy asked irritably, pushing past the security men into the room.

Spock inclined his head gracefully as Kirk used a focussed phaser beam to cut the cuffs apart.

‘Why, thank you, doctor,’ he said smoothly. ‘It is always reassuring to see you at the back of the party.’

McCoy muttered, seeming unable to tell if he had just been insulted or not. Kirk laughed.

‘Everything’s back to normal, I see,’ he said. ‘Spock, we’ll have to leave those bracelets until we’re back on the ship – I don’t want to risk burning you – but at least they’re apart. Can you walk?’

Spock pushed himself to his feet, looking dishevelled and rather unsteady.

‘I am quite able to walk,’ he nodded.

‘Then let’s get out of here,’ Kirk said fervently. ‘Carry those three, men,’ he said to his security team. ‘Spock, you need help. You’re limping.’

Spock glanced at McCoy, who was thrusting his medical tricorder towards him.

‘A quite minor injury,’ he said. ‘But I thank you for your support, Captain.’

Kirk grinned. ‘All right, Spock. Let’s get you home.’

  
  



	15. Chapter 15

For Elsie, these had been the strangest few weeks she had ever experienced. To be – miles, it must be – above the surface of her planet was the most bewildering thing. She had looked down from the windows in the ship and been amazed at the perfection of that slowly turning globe with its shreds and whorls of clouds and its varied lands and blue seas. Surely no one had ever seen the Earth like this before?

What amazed her the most was how easy it was to slot into this world. She had not been in contact with many of the crew. The captain seemed constantly busy, but Grayson, or Spock as she must learn to call him, and Dr McCoy were frequent visitors and she had spent long hours in pleasant but strikingly inconsequential conversation in her short time here. They were careful, it was obvious, to talk very little about the future that she did not belong in, but they were fascinated by her present, what was to them their distant past.

‘The problem is to get you home as soon as possible,’ Spock confided to her seriously. ‘We dare not risk another shuttle launch into your atmosphere. The first held enough risk. As soon as Mr Scott has made the necessary repairs to the transporter we will beam you down.’

‘It will be repaired soon?’ she asked anxiously. Much as it was fascinating being here, she missed her Jim and her home.

He nodded. ‘Within the next twenty-four hours, Scott believes. That brings me to another matter, Elsie.’

He looked at her gravely, and she felt as if he were looking down into her soul.

‘What is it?’ she asked, startled at his intensity.

‘You have seen many things that you should not have seen,’ he told her. ‘You have been exposed to considerable knowledge of the future.’

‘But what can I do – ’ she began.

‘You need do nothing,’ he assured her. ‘It is what _I_ will do. You understand that I am not human, Elsie, and that I have abilities of which you know very little?’

She nodded, her eyes wide.

‘One of those abilities is to touch another’s mind,’ he said. ‘I can – communicate – directly with your mind by touching your skin. I can use this ability to alter your memories of me and of this time here, if I have your permission. I can do the same to Jim.’

She stared at him. ‘Alter my memories? What do you mean? Make me forget – you? All of this?’

He shook his head. ‘Not everything,’ he said. ‘After all, you spoke of your guest in the village, your cousin has met me. It would be foolish to erase your memories of me entirely. But it would be best if I removed your memories of this place, and the substance of what I am. I would be – a fugitive, perhaps. A stranger. Most certainly not an alien who was born many, many decades after your death.’

******

It was dark as they materialised and the sudden taste of fresh air startled Elsie. She hadn’t realised how dead the air had tasted on the ship. No breeze, no scent of grass and earth or even, she never thought she would miss it, the pungency of sheep dung on the ground.

‘Well, Jim will be surprised,’ she remarked to Spock, and he nodded silently. In the dark she could only see the outline of his head and his military bearing. There was no sign of those satanic features in silhouette.

‘Let’s go inside,’ she said. Lamplight was pushing out from the kitchen window in a broadening strip. She could smell coal smoke in the air.

Spock followed her across the yard. She knocked lightly on the door before lifting the latch, afraid of startling Jim by walking straight in. He wasn’t a hasty man, but he did have his shotgun nearby if he were in the kitchen.

‘Oh, Else,’ he said laconically, looking up at the pair.

He was sitting by the stove, rubbing grease into his boots. Beside him on the closed stove top was a plate with a remnant of toast on it, and evidence of a poorly cooked egg.

‘Oh, Jim, you’ve not been eating,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Aye, well, when a woman’s not here to cook, but gallivanting off with other men,’ he began.

She glanced at Spock. He looked vaguely disconcerted.

‘Don’t worry. He’s joking,’ she assured him.

‘Ahh,’ he said, still looking a little uncomfortable.

‘Well, I’m back, Jim,’ she said. ‘And back for good. This little adventure’s over. Our Grayson’s found his memories and his people and he’s ready to go home.’

‘Well, he’d better get back there, then,’ Jim said, standing up from his chair and reaching out a hand. ‘I hope you have a good journey, lad. Is it far?’

Spock glanced at Elsie, and she glanced at him. She had agreed not to speak of her time on the ship to him. It would only complicate matters.

‘Jim, Elsie has agreed, and I hope you will too, to a process that will prevent future disruption of the time stream,’ Spock said gravely. ‘It is a process called ‘mind meld.’ If you will allow me, I can access your memories of my time here and alter them somewhat.’

‘Access my – memories?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘You mean – some kind of mesmerism? Mumbo-jumbo?’

Spock shook his head. ‘Not mumbo-jumbo. It is a process entirely proven by science. Something inherent to my species, although not to yours. I will explain it all quite thoroughly, and only proceed if you agree.’

‘It’s all right, Jim,’ Elsie told him, putting her hand to his arm. ‘He’s explained it all to me. I agree, and I hope you will too.’

******

It was a strange feeling, Elsie thought. She couldn’t quite pin it down. She wasn’t sure what had happened, but she knew that Grayson was about to leave now, and she would not see him again. It had been a strange few weeks, taking him in and helping him, running halfway across the country only to end up back here again, saying goodbye. She would miss him, she was sure, and more than Jim would. Jim had hardly known him.

‘You’ll be all right on your journey?’ she asked him uncertainly, and Grayson nodded. His hat was pushed down very low on his head, and his eyes seemed veiled.

‘I will be quite all right,’ he assured her.

‘It’s so dark out. You should wait till morning.’

‘I will be quite all right,’ he repeated, pressing his hand against hers. ‘Thank you, Elsie, and you too, Jim, for all your help. I will always be grateful.’

‘Aye, of course,’ Jim said, shaking his hand gruffly and firmly. ‘It’s been a pleasure. We’d do it again.’

‘Thank you,’ Grayson repeated. ‘No, I do not need you to show me out,’ he said as Jim moved towards the door. ‘I will be quite fine.’

Elsie watched him, feeling as if her mind were just a little muffled. He walked to the door, looked back once, then disappeared into the darkness outside. She heard his voice, briefly, and then saw the strangest gleam of light from outside, but by the time she had reached the window there was nothing to be seen. He must be off down the track by now, and she wondered if he had some kind of light that she had just seen him putting on as he rounded the corner. She hoped he would be all right. It seemed like a big, dark world out there for a stranger like him.

‘He’ll be all right,’ Jim said, coming up to her and answering her unspoken fear. He put his arm about her shoulders and gave them a quick squeeze. ‘He’s a capable sort. He’ll be all right.’

  
  


 


End file.
